The paper proposes an on-line heuristic search method to solve the robot continuous-path tracking control problem. It is a numerical technique that does not require inverse kinematic modelling of the robot, and gives accurate tracking with good performance in the presence of disturbances. It can be applied to serial-chain robots with any number of degrees of freedom. Its convergence does not depend on the initial approximation, and it is not sensitive to robot singularities. Its practical application was tested on a 5 DOF robot, without loss of generality. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.O TEXTO COMPLETO DESTE ARTIGO, ESTARÁ DISPONÍVEL À PARTIR DE NOVEMBRO DE 2014.5912611271