An adaptive technique for trajectory tracking control of a wheeled mobile robots without velocity measurements

This paper addresses an adaptive method for designing a sensorless trajectory tracking control scheme for a wheeled mobile robot. In order to reduce the cost of the robot, a new Nonlinear Observer (NOB) is used to leave out velocity sensors in the robot. Also, an adaptive model reference technique is used for designing the dynamic controller. In order to ensure the implementability of proposed controller, dynamic controller and nonlinear observer are designed in the presence of uncertainties. In addition, the Observer-based Kinematic Controller (OKC) is designed in the presence of sliding velocity. In order to improve the performance of the kinematic controller, sliding velocity is estimated and used for modification of kinematic controller. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulations.     

Globally exponential controller/observer for tracking in robots without velocity measurement

In this work, we present an observer and continuous controller for a multiple degree of freedom robotic plant without velocity measurement. For this considered plant, we propose and present an observer/controller that estimates or observes the velocity and drives the position tracking error to zero. We prove that the combined tracking error and observer error converges to zero globally exponentially and that all closed loop signals remain bounded. A contribution of the present paper, as compared to previous work for this same plant, can be deemed to be the globally‐exponential convergence of the present paper versus the semi‐globally exponential and globally asymptotic results of previous papers. To the best of our knowledge, the present paper is the first proven globally‐exponential result for this plant and also the first global result for which the size of the control torque does not increase exponentially with respect to the size of the tracking error. The control torque is continuous; however, the time derivative of the velocity estimate is discontinuous but only at isolated time instants. No sliding modes are used. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Robust finite-time tracking control of nonholonomic mobile robots without velocity measurements

The problem of robust finite-time trajectory tracking of nonholonomic mobile robots with unmeasurable velocities is studied. The contributions of the paper are that: first, in the case that the angular velocity of the mobile robot is unmeasurable, a composite controller including the observer-based partial state feedback control and the disturbance feed-forward compensation is designed, which guarantees that the tracking errors converge to zero in finite time. Second, if the linear velocity as well as the angular velocity of mobile robot is unmeasurable, with a stronger constraint, the finite-time trajectory tracking control of nonholonomic mobile robot is also addressed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control laws is demonstrated by simulation.     

Trajectory tracking control of mobile robots without using longitudinal velocity measurements

We propose a new robust trajectory tracking control scheme for wheeled mobile robots without longitudinal velocity measurements. In the proposed controller, a velocity observer is used to estimate the longitudinal velocity of a wheeled mobile robot. A wheeled mobile robot model, including motor dynamics, is used to develop the controller. The developed controller has the following useful properties. (1) The developed controller does not require any accurate knowledge of the robot parameters or the motor parameters. Even if there are uncertainties in the robot dynamics, including the motor properties, it is certain that tracking errors ultimately become uniformly bounded in a closed-loop system using the developed controller. (2) It is shown theoretically that the ultimate norms of tracking errors can easily be reduced by setting only one design parameter.     

Robust tracking control for a class of electrically driven flexible-joint robots without velocity measurements

This article addresses the motion tracking control for a class of flexible-joint robotic manipulators actuated by brushed direct current motors. This class of electrically driven flexible-joint robots is perturbed by time-varying parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. A novel observer-based robust dynamic feedback tracking controller without velocity measurements will be developed such that the resulting closed-loop system is locally stable, all the states and signals are bounded and the trajectory tracking errors can be made as small as possible. Only the measurements of link position and armature current are required for feedback and so the number of sensors in the practical implementation of the developed control scheme can be greatly reduced. The observer structure is of reduced order in the sense that the observer is constructed only to estimate the velocity signals and whose dimension is half of the dimension of flexible-joint robots. Especially, for the set-point regulation problem, the developed controller is simplified to a linear time-invariant controller. Consequently, the robust tracking control scheme developed in this study can be extended to handle a broader class of uncertain electrically driven flexible-joint robots and the developed robust control schemes possess the properties of computational simplicity and easy implementation. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms.     

Neural adaptive PID formation control of car-like mobile robots without velocity measurements

A virtual leader–follower formation control of a group of car-like mobile robots is addressed in this paper. First, the kinematic and dynamic models of car-like robots are transformed into a second-order leader–follower formation model which inherits all structural properties of the robot dynamic model. Then, a new observer-based proportional–integral-derivative formation controller is proposed to force that all robots construct a desired formation with respect to a predefined virtual leader. To improve the formation tracking and observation performance, the integral action is incorporated into the design of the observer–controller scheme. Adaptive robust and neural network techniques are also employed to compensate uncertain parameters, unmodeled dynamics, and external disturbances. Lyapunov’s direct method is utilized to show that the formation tracking and observation errors are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded. Then, the proposed controller is extended to the leader–follower formation of a team of tractor–trailer systems. Finally, simulation results illustrate the efficiency of the proposed controller.     

非完整移动机器人轨迹跟踪自适应控制器设计

针对轮式移动机器人的非完整运动学模型,将自适应反演控制技术和李亚普诺夫稳定性理论应用于机器人轨迹跟踪控制,设计了具有全局渐近稳定性的自适应轨迹跟踪控制器,并在Matlab环境下实现了移动机器人对直线和椭圆2种轨迹追踪的仿真实验.实验表明:该控制方法在轨迹跟踪控制中有较好的航向跟踪效果,对机器人非完整系统模型的非线性特性...     

位置和速度受限的微型无人直升机轨迹跟踪控制器

针对微型无人直升机在狭窄空间中的轨迹跟踪问题,设计了一种可以限制直升机位置和速度的跟踪控制器.首先将直升机的模型简化为一个未建模的动态模型.基于简化模型利用受限反步法设计控制器,其中在位置控制回路用障碍李雅普诺夫函数代替传统的纯二次型李雅普诺夫函数,以此来限制直升机的位置和速度;用指令滤波器对反步过程中虚拟控制的导数进行估计,避免了复杂的解析计算.此外,将未建模动态和指令滤波器误差合并成有界扰动项,并设计了自适应算法对扰动的上界进行估计和补偿.稳定性分析证明了直升机的闭环跟踪误差最终一致有界,且位置和速度始终位于预设的限制集合中.仿真结果验证了该控制器的有效性.     

A nonlinear trajectory tracking controller for mobile robots with velocity limitation via fuzzy gains

This paper proposes a fuzzy controller for trajectory tracking with unicycle-like mobile robots. Such controller uses two Takagi–Sugeno (TS) fuzzy blocks to generate its gains. The controller is able to limit the velocity and control signals of the robot, and to reduce the errors arising from its dynamics as well. The stability of the developed controller is proven, using the theory of Lyapunov. Experimental results show that the use of the proposed controller is attractive in comparison with the use of a controller with fixed saturation function.     

Spacecraft relative rotation tracking without angular velocity measurements

We present a solution to the problem of tracking relative rotation in a leader-follower spacecraft formation using feedback from relative attitude only. The controller incorporates an approximate-differentiation filter to account for the unmeasured angular velocity. We show uniform practical asymptotic stability (UPAS) of the closed-loop system. For simplicity, we assume that the leader is controlled and that we know orbital perturbations; however, this assumption can be easily relaxed to boundedness without degrading the stability property. We also assume that angular velocities of spacecraft relative to an inertial frame are bounded. Simulation results of a leader-follower spacecraft formation using the proposed controller structure are also presented.     

Position tracking in delayed bilateral teleoperators without velocity measurements

This work considers the control of nonlinear bilateral teleoperators with variable time delays without the need of velocity measurements. The recently proposed Immersion and Invariance observer is used to obtain an exponentially convergent estimate of the unmeasured velocities. Under the classical assumption that the human operator and the environment define passive, velocity to force, maps, it is proved that with this observer and a Proportional plus damping controller, velocities and position error are globally bounded. Finally, in the case that the human operator and the environment do not exert forces on the local and remote manipulators, respectively, global asymptotic convergence of velocities and of position error to zero is achieved. The theoretical results are sustained with simulations using a couple of two degrees‐of‐freedom nonlinear manipulators. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust tracking control for a class of flexible-joint time-delay robots using only position measurements

In this paper, robust tracking control is investigated for a class of uncertain flexible-joint robots with time delays and time-varying perturbations. By employing the Lyapunov--Krasovskii functional technique and backstepping design technique, a novel robust tracking control scheme using only position measurements is developed such that all the states and signals of the closed-loop flexible-joint time-delay robot system remain bounded and the tracking error can asymptotically converge to a small neighbourhood around the origin. By appropriately choosing the weighting gains in the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals, the circular phenomenon in the controller design is overcome. Due to suitably designing the velocity observer and the virtual control input, the link-side dynamics does not need to be incorporated into the actuator-side tracking error dynamics, and so the complexity in the backstepping design is avoided. Consequently, we can easily construct the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals, and, in turn, the robust tracking control scheme developed here is a linear time-varying controller and can be simply implemented. Simulation examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.     

轮式移动机器人的位置量测输出反馈轨迹跟踪控制

针对机器人的姿态角难以精确测量的困难,本文研究基于位置测量的轮式移动机器人的轨迹跟踪问题.首先提出一种利用机器人的位置信息估计其姿态角的降维状态观测器,当机器人的线速度严格大于零时,可保证姿态角观测误差的指数收敛.然后给出一种新的状态反馈轨迹跟踪控制律,当参考轨迹满足一定的激励条件时,可以保证机器人的线速度严格大于零且跟踪误差全局渐近收敛.进一步结合姿态角观测器和状态反馈控制律,得到一种输出反馈轨迹跟踪控制算法.理论分析表明,当参考轨迹满足一定的激励条件时,所提出的输出反馈控制算法可以保证跟踪误差的全局渐近收敛.最后对所提出的姿态角观测器、状态反馈和输出反馈轨迹跟踪控制算法进行了仿真验证,证实了算法的有效性,并且当存在位置测量误差时,所提出的输出反馈轨迹跟踪控制算法仍可以保证机器人对参考轨迹的实际跟踪.     

Distributed formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots without global position measurements

This paper proposes a new class of distributed nonlinear controllers for leader-following formation control of unicycle robots without global position measurements. Nonlinear small-gain design methods are used to deal with the problem caused by the nonholonomic constraint of the unicycle robot and yield simple conditions for practical implementation. With the proposed distributed controllers, the formation control objective can be achieved without assuming any tree sensing structures. More interestingly, the distributed controller is robust to position measurement errors and the linear velocities of the robots can be restricted to specific bounded ranges.     

Global trajectory tracking control of VTOL-UAVs without linear velocity measurements

This paper deals with the position control of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) without linear velocity measurements. We propose a multistage constructive procedure, exploiting the cascade property of the translational and rotational dynamics. More precisely, we consider the force as a virtual control input for the translational dynamics, from which we extract the required (desired) system attitude and thrust achieving the tracking objective. Thereafter, the control torque is designed to drive the actual attitude to the desired one. A nonlinear observer, as well as some instrumental auxiliary variables are used to obviate the need for the linear velocity. Global asymptotic stability of the overall closed loop system is achieved. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.     

Noncertainty equivalent adaptive control of robot manipulators without velocity measurements

This paper presents a noncertainty equivalent adaptive motion control scheme for robot manipulators in the absence of link velocity measurements. A new output feedback adaptation algorithm, based on the attractive manifold design approach, is developed. A proportional-integral adaptation is selected for the adaptive parameter estimator to strengthen the passivity of the system. In order to relieve velocity measurements, an observer is designed to estimate the velocities. The controller guarantees semiglobal asymptotic motion tracking and velocity estimation, as well as L_∞ and L₂ bounded parameter estimation error. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified by simulations for a two-link robot manipulator and a four-bar linkage. The results are further compared with the earlier certainty-equivalent adaptive partial and full state feedback controller to highlight potential closed-loop performance improvements.     

An adaptive tracking controller using neural networks for a classof nonlinear systems

A neural-network-based adaptive tracking control scheme is proposed for a class of nonlinear systems in this paper. It is shown that RBF neural networks are used to adaptively learn system uncertainty bounds in the Lyapunov sense, and the outputs of the neural networks are then used as the parameters of the controller to compensate for the effects of system uncertainties. Using this scheme, not only strong robustness with respect to uncertain dynamics and nonlinearities can be obtained, but also the output tracking error between the plant output and the desired reference output can asymptotically converge to zero. A simulation example is performed in support of the proposed neural control scheme.     

A linear-interpolation-based controller design for trajectory tracking of mobile robots

This work presents a novel linear interpolation based methodology to design control algorithms for the trajectory tracking of mobile robotic systems. Particularly, a typical nonlinear multivariable system—a mobile robot—is analysed. The methodology is simple and can be applied to the design of a large class of control systems. Simulation and experimental results are presented and discussed, demonstrating the good performance of the proposed methodology.     

Cooperative adaptive consensus tracking for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots

This paper addresses the cooperative adaptive consensus tracking for a group of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots, where the nonholonomic robot model is assumed to be a canonical vehicle having two actuated wheels and one passive wheel. By integrating a kinematic controller and a torque controller for the nonholonomic robotic system, a cooperative adaptive consensus tracking strategy is developed for the uncertain dynamic models using Lyapunov-like analysis in combination with backstepping approach and sliding mode technique. A key feature of the developed adaptive consensus tracking algorithm is the introduction of a directed network topology into the control constraints based on algebraic graph theory to characterise the communication interaction among robots, which plays an important role in realising the cooperative consensus tracking with respect to a specific common reference trajectory. Furthermore, a novel framework is proposed for developing a unified methodology for the convergence analysis of the closed-loop control systems, which can fully ensure the desired adaptive consensus tracking for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots. Subsequently, illustrative examples and numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate and visualise the theoretical results.     

On global tracking control of a VTOL aircraft without velocity measurements

This note develops a nonlinear output-feedback controller to force a nonminimum phase, underactuated vertical take-off and landing aircraft to globally asymptotically track a reference trajectory generated by a reference model. The control development is based on a global exponential observer, some global coordinate transformations, Lyapunov's direct method and an extension of the backstepping technique. Interestingly, the proposed methodology also yields new results for the previously studied problems of stabilization and output tracking or regulation. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.