Implementation of Fault-Tolerant Control for a Robot Manipulator Based on Synchronous Sliding Mode Control
Silvio Simani
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see the attached file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In the reviewer’s opinion, the paper could have been more interesting and organised better. In general, the overall contribution remains scientifically poor and technically questionable. In more detail, both the paper’s title and its Abstract state sufficiently clearly the main aims of the paper. However, the use of acronyms should be avoided in the paper’s Abstract, as they reduce its readability. The keyword list seems appropriate. Section 1 cites many references, but it does not provide an exhaustive overview as well as an accurate and critical discussion of the state of the art of the related literature. Sections 2 and 3 should have provided a better description of the exploited models, and in particular how they can cope with the main effects of uncertainty and disturbance, as well as the model-reality mismatch. This represents the key point when the reliability and robustness features of the proposed solutions have to be verified and validated for application to real systems. Section 4 seems to present well established topics: the authors should help the reader to understand the main novelty aspects of the proposed issues. Due to these flaws, both the case study and the achieved results proposed in Section 5 remain ineffective to highlight the main features of the proposed solutions. The authors reported some pictures, but they did not help the reader to understand the effectiveness of the proposed strategies. On the other hand, suitable performance metrics were not exploited for helping the reader to understand advantages and drawbacks of the developed schemes. The same remarks apply to Section 6. Finally, Section 7 does not suggest effective open problems and future issues that could require further investigations. As further remark, as for the paper’s Abstract, acronyms should not be used here, since it should remain a stand-alone part of the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have answered my technical questions. A quick glance at the paper still reveals too many English presentation issues., e.g.,
Line 40, add “a” before “picking”.
Line 41, “Most study” => “Most studies”.
Lines 41-43, “increase the ability to deal with uncertainties/ disturbances of controller. Therefore, the performance degradation of system with AFTC strategy due to the slow response still opens problem.” => “increasing the ability to deal with uncertainties/ disturbances of a controller. Therefore, the performance degradation of a system with the AFTC strategy due to the slow response remains an open problem.”
Lines 77-80, “This paper interested with the” => “This work is interested in addressing a”. This sentence should be split into multiple ones. It is too long to follow.
Line 56-57, “another technique” => “other techniques”
Line 63, the sentence is bad in English. It is not understandable.
Line 157, “to exactly know” => “to be exactly known”.
Line 158, please add “and” before “we can take”.
The 2nd last sentence of Conclusion, “In future works, the effect of adjustment synchronization Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW 18 of 19 parameters will investigate” => “Future work includes the optimal tuning of synchronization parameters by following some methods, e.g., [A],”
[A] can any super-parameter tuning methods, e.g., those in S. Gao, et al., "Dendritic neuron model with effective learning algorithms for classification, approximation and prediction," IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 30(2), pp. 601 - 614, Feb. 2019.
Last Line of Conclusion, “for serial robot manipulator” => “of a serial robot manipulator”
Ref. 14 needs to be updated into "IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 690-700, Feb. 2020."
The following paper is related:
F. N. Zhang, “High-speed nonsingular terminal switched sliding mode control of robot manipulators,” IEEE/CAA J. of Autom. Sinica, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 775-781, Oct. 2017
By the way, authors' answers to my comments are full of English errors as well.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Sections 5 and 6 remain weak, and they do not help the reader to understand the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The authors simply reported many pictures, but they did not consider any performance metrics or indices that demonstrate the efficacy of the design. Moreover, for the same motivations, the robustness and the reliability features of the design remain questionable. These points need to be carefully improved before the paper may be reconsidered for publication.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper may be accepted without any further round of reviewing.
