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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Neurocomputing
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neucom

Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo

mechanisms with friction compensation
Shubo Wang a,∗, Qiang Chen b, Xuemei Ren c, Haisheng Yu a
a
School of Automation, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
b
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China
c
School of Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, a novel adaptive funnel sliding mode control scheme is proposed for servo mechanisms
Received 15 June 2018 with friction compensation. A continuously differentiable friction model is employed to capture the un-
Revised 20 August 2019
known friction dynamics. The friction nonlinearities and unknown dynamics are estimated by using neu-
Accepted 10 October 2019
ral network (NN). Moreover, a modified funnel variable, which relaxes limitation in original funnel control
Available online xxx
(e.g., systems with relative degree 1 or 2), is developed using the tracking error to replace the scaling fac-
Communicated by Prof. Yugang Niu tor, which is used to design the sliding mode surface. Then, a novel adaptive funnel sliding mode control
scheme is proposed for servo mechanisms to improve the transient performance. The effectiveness of the
Keywords:
Neural network (NN) developed control method is validated via experimental results.
Adaptive control © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Funnel function
Servo mechanism
Sliding mode control (SMC)

1. Introduction models. To design a good adaptive controller, it is necessary to

The high performance servo mechanisms have been widely ap-
plied in industry applications, which have also drawn significant
attentions in the academic fields [1–7]. However, the unknown dy-
namics such as dead-zone [8,9] and nonlinear friction [10,11] intro-
duced by the transmission devices can deteriorate the control per-
formance. To improve the control performance, the friction should
be compensated in control design.
PID control algorithm was used to reduce the effect of the fric-
tion via feedback or feedforward approach [12]. However, PID con-
trol method may limit applicability due to the amplification of sen-
sor noise and the occurrence of limit cycles. With development
of the control theories and technologies, several kinds of control
methods were used to control the system with unknown dynamics,
such as adaptive control [13–15], and sliding mode control [16–19],
etc. Moreover, the intelligent control technologies (neural network
[20–24] and fuzzy logic control [25–28]) have also been utilized
to compensate the unknown nonlinearity in control system due to
their approximation and learning abilities.
Among these control methods, the adaptive control is an
effective way to compensate the friction by using explicit friction
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: wangshubo1130@126.com (S. Wang), sdnjchq@zjut.edu.cn (Q.
Chen), xmren@bit.edu.cn (X. Ren), yu.hs@163.com (H. Yu).
build a precise friction model. Over the past years, several kinds of
friction model were developed to capture the friction behaviours
[29–31]. Among these friction models, LuGre friciton model can
capture friction dynamics such as the Stribeck effect, hysteresis,
stick-lop limit cycling, and rising static friction. Then LuGre model
has been successfully used to compensate the friction in servo
systems [32–34]. However, the conventional LuGre friction model
is piecewise continuous and therefore nondifferentiable. It is
difficult to design high-performance continuous controller.
The sliding mode control (SMC) technique is an effective way
to deal with the uncertainties and bounded disturbances due to
its simple algorithm and high robustness to disturbances [35,36].
In [37], a SMC scheme has been presented for the linear motor to
suppress the external disturbance and payload variations. In [36], a
disturbance observer (DOB) based terminal SMC was designed for
the permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) speed regula-
tion system to reject the external disturbance. Although, the SMC
can improve the control performance, the chattering phenomenon
in SMC can not be completely eliminated, which may reduce the
control accuracy. To eliminate the chattering phenomenon, the
nonsingular terminal SMC (NTSMC) approach has been reported in
[38]. Recently, by using the new-type sliding surface design, the
NTSMC has been extended to some new-type NTSMC with faster
convergence time [39–41], i.e. nonsingular fast TSMC (NFTSMC).
The main feature is that the NFTSMC can retain the advantages of

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.10.006
0925-2312/© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
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NTSMC and provide a faster state convergence than that of NTSMC. ud , uq d− and q−axis stator voltages, respectively;
However, aforementioned these control methods do not consider np number of pole pairs;
the transient and steady-state performance. R, L stator resistance and stator inductance;
Recently, a new control method with performance constraints TL load torque;
named prescribed performance control (PPC) was developed by KT torque constant;
Bechlioulis and Rovithakis in [42,43]. The main idea of the PPC ψf rotor flux linkage;
is that a prescribed performance function (PPF) is employed to q angular position;
transform the tracking error of the original system into a new er- q̇ angular speed;
ror system, which is incorporated into control design. The tran- Tf friction torque;
sient and steady-state performance of tracking error is character- J motor inertia.
ized by using a PPF. This method has been applied in some fields, In practice, the parameter L/R is small in comparison to the me-
such as servo mechanism [10], vehicle suspensions system [44,45], chanical time constant. Thus, the parameter Ldid /dt is close to zero
underwater vehicle [46], piezo-actuated positioning systems [47], [3,53]. Usually, the d− axis reference current id is set to be i∗d = 0
and spacecraft attitude control [48]. However, the conventional PPC in order to approximately eliminate the coupling between angular
may suffer from singularity problem which may cause instability. velocity and currents. If the controller for the two current loops
Moreover, funnel control (FC), which was developed by Ilchmann work well, the output id and iq satisfy id = i∗d = 0 and iq = i∗q . Then,
[49], was also utilized to improve transient response of the control Eq. (1) can be reduced to the following form:
system. The methodology of FC is utilized to control a class of sys- ⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
 −R KE  uq
tems without identifying the plant itself under the condition that i̇q ⎜ L L ⎟ iq ⎜ L ⎟
=⎝ ⎠ +⎝
T f + TL ⎠
measurement noise and parameter uncertainties are tolerated. This (2)
q̈ KT q̇
concept has been utilized in some control systems [50–52]. How- − 0 −
J J
ever, the FC can only suit a class of systems with relative degree 1
or 2 that limits application in practice. where KE = n p ψ f .
This paper proposes a novel adaptive funnel sliding mode con- Choose a state variable x = [x1 , x2 ]T = [q, q̇]T , Eq. (2) is simpli-
trol (AFSMC) scheme for servo mechanisms with friction compen- fied as
sation. A continuously differentiable friction model is used to ad-

ẋ1 = x2
dress the friction dynamics. This model is incorporated into an (3)
augmented neural network (NN) to account for the unknown non- ẋ2 = K1 u − TL /J − T f /J
linearities. Both the weights and primary friction coefficients are where u = iq , K1 = KT /J.
updated via the adaptive law. Moreover, a modified funnel vari- The aim of this paper is that an adaptive controller is designed
able is developed by using the tracking error to replace the scaling to improve the transient performance, and the tracking error is
factor. Then a novel sliding mode surface is defined based on the within given boundary.
modified funnel variable. Finally, an AFSMC method is designed for
servo mechanisms to improve the transient and steady-state per- Assumption 1. The reference signal xd and its first derivatives ẋd
formance. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the pro- are measurable, and the reference xd , ẋd and ẍd are continuous and
posed method. bounded.
The major contributions of this paper are listed as follows:
1) A novel sliding mode surface is developed based on the mod- 2.2. Modified LuGre friction model [54]
ified funnel function, which is designed by using tracking error to
replace the scaling factor that relaxes limitation in original funnel Over the past years, various friction models have been proposed
control. to describe the friction dynamics [29–31,55]. Among these models,
2) An AFSMC scheme is developed for servo mechanism to im- LuGre model has been widely utilized to capture friction behav-
prove the transient performance. The effectiveness of the proposed iors. To describe the friction dynamics of servo mechanisms, LuGre
method is proved by using experimental results on a turntable model is described by
servo system. T f = σ0 z0 + σ1 ż0 + σ2 q̇ (4)
The paper is structured as: Section 2 describes the system
model. Section 3 provides the controller design. Section 4 presents where σ 0 , σ 1 and σ 2 denote the stiffness of the bristles between
convergence analysis. Section 5 shows the experimental results. two contact surface, damping coefficient of the bristles and vis-
Section 6 gives the conclusions. cous coefficient, respectively. z0 is the unmeasurable internal fric-
tion state which can be represented by
2. Problem formulation  1

ż0 = ω 1 − z0 (5)
g(q̇ )
2.1. System model
where g(w) is nonlinear function. Usually, the nonlinear function is
given as
Consider the servo system is driven by using permanent mag-
g(ω ) = [ fc + ( fs − fc )e−( ωs ) ]sgn(q̇ )
q̇ 2
net synchronous motors (PMSM) model (See Fig. 1) which can be (6)
described as [3]:
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ud ⎞ where fc denotes Coulomb friction, and fs is stiction force, respec-
−R
⎛ ⎞ −n p q̇ 0 tively; ωs is the Stribeck velocity.
⎜ ⎛
⎟ id ⎞
i̇d ⎜
L
⎟ ⎜ L ⎟ It is worth to note that the Stribeck function g(q̇ ) is a discon-
⎜ ⎟ ⎜ −R npψ f ⎟ ⎜ uq ⎟ tinuous function due to signum function in g(q̇ ). The conventional
⎝i̇q ⎠ ⎜−n p q̇
= ⎟⎝iq ⎠ + ⎜
⎜ L ⎟
⎟ (1)
⎜ L L ⎟ ⎝ ⎠ LuGre model cannot be used in backstepping controller design. To
q̈ ⎝ KT ⎠ q̇ T f + TL overcome this issue, we will employ a modified Stribeck function
0 − 0 −
J J g(q̇ ) is this paper. Hence, the modified nonlinear function g(q̇ )
[56] is given as
where
id , iq d− and q−axis stator currents, respectively; g(ω ) = ( fs − fc )[tanh(c1 q̇ − tanh(c2 q̇ ))] + fc tanh(c3 q̇ ) (7)

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
mechanisms with friction compensation, Neurocomputing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.10.006
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Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the PMSM position-regulation system.

where c1 , c2 and c3 are positive constants.

Define a new function N (q̇ ) = g(q̇q̇) , the modified model can be
written as

Tf = σ0 z0 + σ1 ż0 + σ2 q̇
ż0 = q̇ − N (q̇ )z0 (8)

When ż0 = 0, the stead-steady friction fss can be obtained

fss = σ0 ( fs − fc )[tanh(c1 q̇ − tanh(c2 q̇ ))] + σ0 fc tanh(c3 q̇ ) + σ2 q̇

(9)

2.3. Neural Networks (NNs) Approximation

Fig. 2. Basic concept of the funnel control [49].
NNs have been widely used in modeling and control of non-
linear systems using their approximation and learning abilities
[57,58]. In this paper, the NNs are employed to approximate a e(t ) = xd − x(t ) (14)
continuous function f(x). The f(x): Rm → R over a compact domain where xd and x(t) represent the desired trajectory and output sig-
 ∈ Rm is defined as nal.
f (x ) = W ∗ X (x ) + ε ∗ ∀x ∈  ⊂ Rm (10) The funnel boundary
1
where ε∗ denotes the approximation error of NN, and m, W|ε ∗ | ≤ ε
∗
Fϕ (t ) = (15)
is the ideal value of NN weights that minimizes the approximation ϕ (t )
error ε ∗ . Therefore is given by the reciprocal of an arbitrarily chosen bounded, con-

tinuous and positive prescribed function ϕ (t) for all t ≥ 0 and
W = arg min sup | f (x ) − W X (x )|
∗ ∗T
(11) lim ϕ (t ) > 0. Then the funnel itself is defined as the set
L W ∈R x∈ t→∞

Because the ideal NN weight W∗ is unknown, thus, the estimation Fϕ : t → {e ∈ Rn |ϕ (t ) · e(t ) < 1} (16)
Ŵ of W∗ is used in controller design.
which encloses the error e(t) for all t ≥ 0. Then, the control gain
τ ( · ) is adjusted by
3. Controller design
ψ (t )
τ (Fϕ (t ), ψ (t ), e(t ) ) = (17)
3.1. Funnel control Fϕ (t ) − e(t )
to ensure that the error e(t) evolves inside the funnel Fϕ (t). ψ (t) is
Funnel-control (FC), proposed by Ilchmann [49], is a new con- the scaling factor. Thus, as the error e(t) approaches the boundary
trol method. The key point of FC is that a time varying gain τ ( · ) Fϕ (t), the gain τ (t) will increase. If the error e(t) becomes small,
is used to control a class of systems S with a relative degree r one the gain τ (t) decreases.
or two. The system S is controlled by FC law u(t) (See Fig. 2 [49]), According to [49], the funnel boundary Fϕ (t) can be defined by
which is defined as using exponentially decaying form
u(t ) = τ (Fϕ (t ), ψ (t ), e(t ) ) · e(t ) (12) Fϕ (t ) = ϕ0 · exp(−at ) + ϕ∞ (18)
Define the distance dv (t) where ϕ 0 , ϕ ∞ , a are design parameters, and fulfill ϕ 0 ≥ ϕ ∞ > 0 and
dv (t ) = Fϕ (t ) − e(t ) (13) |e(0 )| < Fϕ (0 ) = ϕ0 + ϕ∞ .
However, the traditional FC [49] is only suitable for a class of
and systems S with relative degree r = 1 or 2 so that it cannot be

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
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widely applied in practice. Thus, a modified funnel variable is pro- TF = α T (x ) (28)
posed and incorporated into controller design, in which any limita-
tion of the conventional FC is avoided. A modified funnel variable where α = [σ0 , σ1 , σ2 ]T
represents the friction coefficients, and
is defined as (x ) = [z, ż, ω] is a vector.
Define  = [W, α ]T and  = [X, ], then (23) can be written as
e(t )
z(t ) = (19)
Fϕ (t ) − e(t ) ṡ = ρ Fϕ gu + T  + ε (29)
where the funnel function Fϕ (t) satisfies the condition in (12).
Remark 2. In (29), the friction dynamics is incorporated into NN
Remark 1. This paper proposes an improved inverse transforma- approximation (27), resulting in a more compact form T  . In ad-
tion function by defining a new funnel function z(t) to avoid poten- dition, an unknown vector θ is defined as θ = T  which denotes
tial singularity problem. Compared with PPC, this method is sim- the total adaptive parameter of NN (27) and (28). Therefore, the
pler and more efficient without computing the derivative of the parameter update law is θ̂ , rather than Ŵ and α .
transformed error.
Then, an adaptive NTSMC can be designed as
 
3.2. Adaptive controller design 1 θ̂ s T
u= −k1 s − k2 |s|γ sgn(s ) −   + δ sgn(s ) (30)
Fϕ ρ g 2η 2
To address position tracking, the tracking error is defined as e =
x1 − xd , Then, from (19), a funnel error variable is defined as where k1 > 0, k2 > 0 and η > 0 are design parameters. In (30), the
feedback term −k1 s − k2 |s|γ sgn(s ) is used to guarantee the finite-
e(t ) time convergence of s, δ sgn(s) is the robustness term for the ap-
z= (20)
Fϕ (t ) − e(t ) proximation error.
Therefore, the parameter undate law θ̂ can be designed as
The derivative of z is 
˙ s2
ż = Fϕ ρ ė − Ḟϕ ρ e (21) θ̂ =  T  − σ θ̂ (31)
2η 2
where ρ = 1
, and z̈ is
(Fϕ (t )−e(t ) )2 where  denotes the learning gain, and σ > 0 is positive parameter.

z̈ = Fϕ ρ ë + Fϕ ρ̇ ė + Ḟϕ ρ ė − F̈ϕ ρ e − Ḟϕ ρ̇ e − Ḟϕ ρ ė (22)

The conventional sliding mode control (SMC) exhibits the chat-
tering problem which can degrade the control performance. To
avoid this issue, a novel terminal sliding mode surface based on
funnel variable is developed in this paper. The novel terminal slid-
ing mode surface
s = ż + λ1 z + λ2 β (z )
with
point in finite-time and all the signal of the closed-loop are semi-
4. Stability analysis
In this section, the Lyapunov stability theory is used to analyse
stability of the closed-loop control system. Consider the following
theorem.
Theorem 1. Consider the closed-loop control system constituting of
(23) servo mechanism (2), adaptive NTSMC (30), and adaptive law (31),
which can guarantee the tracking error converge to the equilibrium
|z|γ sgn(z ), s = 0 or s = 0, |z| > μ globally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB).
β (z ) = (24)
ι1 z + ι2 |z|2 sgn(z ), s =
 0, |z| ≤ μ Proof. Consider the following Lyapunov function candidate as
where λ1 and λ2 are positive constants, and ι1 = (2 − γ )υ γ −1 , 1 2 1 2
ι = (γ − 1 )υ γ −2 . υ is the small positive constant. V1 = s + θ̃ (32)
2 2 2
The derivative of the sliding surface s in (23) is
where θ̃ = θ − θ̂ is the estimation error.
ṡ = z̈ + λ1 ż + λ2 β (ż ) The derivative of (32) is
= Fϕ ρ ë + H + λ1 ż + λ2 β (ż )
V̇1 = sṡ + θ̃  −1 θ̃˙
= Fϕ ρ (ẍ1 − ẍd ) + H + λ1 ż + λ2 β (ż ) (25)  
=s ρ Fϕ gu + T  + ε − θ̃  −1 θ̂˙ (33)
where H = Fϕ ρ̇ ė + Ḟϕ ρ ė − F̈ϕ ρ e − Ḟϕ ρ̇ e − Ḟϕ ρ ė.
Substituting (3) into (25), one has Substituting control law (30) and adaptive law (31) into (33),
one has
ṡ = z̈ + λ1 ż + λ2 β (ż ) 
= Fϕ ρ ë + H + λ1 ż + λ2 β (ż ) θ̂ s T
V̇1 = sT  + s −k1 s − k2 |s|γ sgn(s ) − δ sgn(s ) −  
  2η 2
= Fϕ ρ (K1 u − TL /J − T f /J ) + H + λ1 ż + λ2 β (ż ) 
s2
= Fϕ ρ gu + TF − F (e, ẋd , ẍd , ρ ) (26) + sε − θ̃  T  − σ θ̂ (34)
2η 2
where g = K1 , TF = Fϕ ρ T f /J and F (e, ẋd , ẍd , ρ ) = λ1 ż1 + H + λ1 ż +
λ2 β (ż ) − Fϕ ρ TL /J represents the lumped nonlinearities, which can Using Young’s inequalities, one has
be approximated by using NN as, θ s2 T η2
s T  ≤  +
F (e, ẋd , ẍd , ρ ) = W X (x ) + ε
T
(27) 2η 2 2

where ε is the approximation error and satisfies |ε | ≤ ε N , there is

σ θ̃ 2 σ θ 2
σ θ̃ θ̂ ≤ − + (35)
positive constant δ , which satisfies δ > ε N . 2 2
Moreover, the TF can be written as Substituting (35) into (34), we can obtain that

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
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Table 1
Parameters for different controllers.

Section Parameters

AFSMC λ1 = 7, λ2 = 1.5, β = 8/11, k1 = 0.8, k2 = 0.1,  = 0.5, η = 1, σ = 0.01, ϕ0 = 0.3, a = 2, ϕ∞ = 0.2.

ANC λ = 15, k = 1,  = 0.5, σ = 0.005
PID Kp = 40, Ki = 1, Kd = 0.1
Initial condition θ̂ (0 ) = 0

(See Fig. 3). The closed-loop control system is constituted of servo

motor as a controlled plant, a DSP(TMS28335) connected a per-
sonal computer via an A/D converter. The proposed control algo-
rithms are implemented via a C++ program in CCS3.0 in the DSP.
The sampling time is 0.01s. In this experiment, the motor position
signal is measured by an encoder.

5.2. Implementation of proposed controller

To test the control performance of the proposed adaptive con-

troller, PID control and adaptive neural control (ANC) [60] are em-
ployed as a comparison in this section. The control parameters are
Fig. 3. Structure of the two-axis servo system.
summarized in Table 1.
To compare the control performance, the following performance
 indices are defined:
θ s2 T η2 γ θ̂ s T
V̇1 ≤  + + s −k1 s − k2 |s| sgn(s ) −  
2η 2 2 2η 2 (1) Maximum absolute value of the tracking error is defined as

θ̃ s T
2
σ θ̃ 2
σθ 2
{|e(i )|}
− sδ + sε −  − + Me = max (37)
2η 2 2 2 i=1,...,N

σ θ̃ 2 σθ2 η2 (2) Average tracking error is given as

≤ −k1 s2 − k2 |s|γ +1 − + +
2 2 2
1
N
≤ −V1 + μ (36) μe = |e(i )| (38)
N
where ϱ and μ are positive constants, i.e., i=1

 σ σ θ 2 η2 (3) Standard deviation of the tracking error is

 = min k1 , k2 , , μ= + 
2 2 2
1
N

Then, according the Lyapunov stability theorem, V1 is semi-globally σe = [|e(i )| − μe ]2 (39)

uniformly ultimately bounded; thus, the errors s and θ̃ are
bounded. Based on the Lemma 3.6 in [59], the transformed error
z and ż are bounded, and the tracking error e is bounded. In addi-
tion, the parameter updating law θ̂ is also bounded. Consequently,
the control signal u is bounded. 
The parameter tuning guidelines for all the control parameters
are given as follows:
(1) The funnel parameters ϕ 0 , and ϕ ∞ should satisfy ϕ ≥ ϕ ∞
and the initial condition |z(0)| < Fϕ (0). The parameter α de-
termines the tracking error convergence speed and thus can
be set small at the beginning and then increased via a trial-
and-error method.
(2) The initial condition θ̂ (0 ) should be nonnegative, i.e., θ̂ (0 ) ≥
0. In general, the initial conditions can be selected as zero,
i.e., θ̂ = 0.
(3) The feedback gains ki , i = 1, 2 and learning parameter 
should be chosen as positive constant. In generally, they can
be set large for the ease of fast convergence. However, prac-
tical control systems do not allow to use large gains, which
may produce oscillations.
(4) The adaptation parameter σ is utilized to guarantee the
boundedness of θ̃ , which can be set small constant.
5. Experimental results
5.1. Experimental setup
To validate the effectiveness of the developed AFC scheme, a
turntable servo mechanism is used as the experimental platform
N
i=1
The indices performance are listed in Table 2.
Case 1: To illustrate the tracking performance of the devel-
oped AFSMC, the controllers are first tracking a slowly sinusoidal
signal xd = A sin(2π t/T ) with amplitude A = 0.4 and period T =
5.5. The experimental results are depicted in Fig. 4. Fig. 4 de-
scribes the tacking errors, and control signals for different con-
trollers. From these experimental results, we can see that the
control performance of AFSMC is better than ANC and PID. By
comparing the control performance between AFSMC and ANC, it
is clearly that friction model-based adaptive funnel control can
achieve satisfactory control effect, while the ANC produces the
large tracking error which exceeds the funnel boundary. Among
these three controllers, the tracking error of PID is the largest. In
addition, the control signal of the AFSMC is smooth than ANC and
PID.
Case 2: A sinusoid wave xd = 0.6 sin(2π t/5 ) is chosen as refer-
ence signal to test the tracking performance. The tracking errors
of three controllers are shown in Fig. 5(a), which demonstrates
that the AFSMC has small tracking error, while the ANC and PID
produce larger tracking error which exceed the funnel boundary.
The corresponding control signals of the three controllers are in-
dicated in Fig. 5(b). It can be seen that the control signals are all
bounded.
Case 3: In this case, a fast varying sinusoid signal xd =
0.8 sin(2π t/4 ) is adopted as reference signal. The experimental
results are shown in Fig. 6, where the tracking error and con-
trol signals are described. From this figure, we can find that the
satisfactory control response can be achieved, where a smaller

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
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Table 2
Comparison results of performance indices.

xd = 0.4 sin(2π t/5.5 ) xd = 0.6 sin(2π t/5 ) xd = 0.8 sin(2π t/4 )

PID ANC AFSMC PID ANC AFSMC PID ANC AFSMC

Me 0.0366 0.0265 0.0251 0.0455 0.0457 0.0416 0.0711 0.0904 0.0566

μe 0.0135 0.0062 0.0046 0.0172 0.0095 0.0063 0.0208 0.0202 0.0084
σe 0.0024 0.0083 0.0021 0.0025 0.0096 0.0015 0.0037 0.0042 0.0016

Fig. 4. Experiments for xd = 0.4 sin(2π /5.5 )) (a) Tracking errors and (b) Control signals.

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
mechanisms with friction compensation, Neurocomputing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.10.006
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Fig. 5. Experiments for xd = 0.6 sin(2π t/5 ) (a) Tracking errors and (b) Control signals.

tracking error is within given prescribed boundary. However,
the profiles of the tracking error (Fig. 6(a)) and (control action
(Fig. 6(b)) have more high-frequency fluctuations in comparison to
Case 1 and Case 2. This is reasonable because the proposed adap-
tive controller is able to capture the triggered high-frequency time-
varying dynamics and thus to compensate for their effects by call-
ing for corresponding control actions.
The performance indices are listed in Table 2. As seen from the
table, the proposed AFSMC scheme produces smaller Me , σ e and
μe than ANC and PID methods. Among three control methods, PID
produces the worst control performance. The experimental results
clearly show that the developed AFSMC can produce better control
effect for servo mechanisms than the other two methods under the
different desired trajectories.

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
mechanisms with friction compensation, Neurocomputing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.10.006
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Fig. 6. Experiments for xd = 0.8 sin(2π /4 ) (a) Tracking errors and (b) Control signals.

Case 4: To test the transient performance, a setpoint signal with
an amplitude xd = 0.8 is adopted in this case. To fulfill condition
−δ Fϕ (0 ) < e(0 ) < δ Fϕ (0 ), the funnel Fϕ (t) is selected as Fϕ (t ) =
0.8e−3t + 0.01 with δ = 1. The results are shown in Fig. 7. As
shown in Fig. 7, the transient performance of AFSMC is satisfac-
tory compared with ANC and PID. In addition, the rise time of ANC
and PID is faster than AFSMC, but its produce the overshoot. From
Fig. 7, we can see that the proposed control method can compen-
sate the unknown dynamics of servo mechanism.
Case 5: To further verify the control performance of the devel-
oped control method, a tooth signal is employed in this case. The
experimental results are shown in Fig. 8. From this figure, one can
find that the tracking performance of AFSMC is better than ANC
and PID. Moreover, the tracking error of AFSMC is remained within

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
mechanisms with friction compensation, Neurocomputing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.10.006
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Fig. 7. Setpoint response.

Fig. 8. Response for tooth signal.

a given funnel boundary, while the tracking errors of ANC and PID
exceed the funnel boundary.
6. Conclusion
This paper proposed an AFSMC method for servo mechanism
with friction compensation. A newly LuGre friction model was uti-
lized to capture the friction dynamics. The unknown nonlinearities
were estimated using neural network, and the adaptive parame-
ters is updated online in the control. To improve the transient and
steady-state performance, a modified funnel function is developed
using the tracking error to replace the scaling factor that relaxes
the assumption in original funnel control. A novel sliding mode
surface is designed using the modified funnel variable. Finally, an
AFSMC scheme is developed for servo mechanisms to guarantee
the tracking error within prescribed boundary. Compared with ANC
and PID, the AFSMC has achieved the satisfactory tracking perfor-
mance. For future work, we will focus on extending the suggested
control to servo system with the known system parameters such
as the motor inertia, friction coefficients and load torque.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgement
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (61803216, 61973274, 61433003), the China Post-
Doctoral Science Foundation (2019M650159), and the Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2018BF022).
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Shubo Wang received the B.S. degree in physics from
Binzhou University, Shandong, China, in 2008; the M.S
degree in control science and engineering from the School
of Information Science and Engineering, Central South
University, Hunan, China, 2011; and the Ph.D. degree in
control science and engineering from the Beijing Insti-
tute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2017. Since 2017, He
has been with the School of Automation, Qingdao Univer-
sity. His current research interests include adaptive con-
trol, adaptive parameter estimation, neural network, mo-
tor control, nonlinear control and applications.
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Qiang Chen received the B.S. degree in measurement
and control technology and instrumentation from Hebei
Agricultural University, Baoding, China, in 2006 and the
Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering from
Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2012. He
is currently an Associate Professor with the College of In-
formation Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology,
Hangzhou, China. His research interests include neural
networks, sliding mode control, and adaptive control.
Haisheng Yu received the B.S. degree in electrical au-
tomation from the Harbin University of Civil Engineer-
ing and Architecture in 1985, the M.S. degree in com-
puter applications from Tsinghua University in 1988, and
the Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering from
Shandong University, China, in 2006. He is currently a
Professor with the School of Automation, Qingdao Univer-
sity, China. His research interests include electrical energy
conversion and motor control, applied nonlinear control,
computer control, and intelligent systems.

Xuemei Ren received the B.S. degree from Shandong Uni-

versity, Shandong, China, in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in control engineering from the Beijing University
of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing, China, in 1992
and 1995, respectively. She worked at the School of Au-
tomation, Beijing Institute of Technology as a professor
from 2002. From September 2001 to March 2002, and
April 2005 to October 2005, she visited at the Depart-
ment of Electrical Engineering, the Hong Kong Polytech-
nic University. From July 2006 to July 2007, she visited at
the Automation & Robotics Research Institute, University
of Texas at Arlington as a visiting scholar. She has pub-
lished more than 100 academic papers. Her research in-
terests include nonlinear systems, intelligent control, neural network control, adap-
tive control, multi-drive servo systems and time delay systems.

Please cite this article as: S. Wang, Q. Chen and X. Ren et al., Neural network-based adaptive funnel sliding mode control for servo
mechanisms with friction compensation, Neurocomputing, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2019.10.006