Adaptive tracking control of rigid manipulators using only position measurements

This article presents a new approach to trajectory tracking control of uncertain rigid manipulators using only position measurements. The proposed control strategy is an adaptive scheme that is very general and computationally efficient, requires virtually no information regarding the manipulator dynamic model, and is implementable without calculation of the robot inverse dynamics or inverse kinematic transformations. It is shown that the controller ensures semiglobal uniform boundedness of all signals in the presence of bounded disturbances, and that the ultimate size of the tracking errors can be made arbitrarily small. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the proposed strategy can be used as the basis for developing controllers for “cascaded” robotic systems, such as manipulators with significant actuator dynamics or joint flexibility. The efficacy of this approach to manipulator control is illustrated through both computer simulations and hardware experiments. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Adaptive tracking control of manipulators: Theory and experiments

This paper considers the trajectory tracking problem for uncertain robot manipulators and proposes two adaptive controllers as solutions to this problem. The first controller is derived under the assumption that the manipulator state is measurable, while the second strategy is developed for those applications in which only position measurements are available. The adaptive schemes are very general and computationally efficient since they do not require knowledge of either the mathematical model or the parameter values of the manipulator dynamics, and are implemented without calculation of the robot inverse dynamics or inverse kinematic transformation. It is shown that the control strategies ensure uniform boundedness of all signals in the presence of bounded disturbances, and that the ultimate size of the tracking errors can be made arbitrarily small. Experimental results are presented for a PUMA 560 manipulator and demonstrate that accurate and robust trajectory tracking can be achieved by using the proposed controllers.     

Perfomance-based adaptive tracking control of robot manipulators

This article presents two new adaptive schemes for the motion control of robot manipulators. The proposed controllers are very general and computationally efficient because they do not require knowledge of either the mathematical model or the parameter values of the manipulator dynamics, and are implemented without calculation of the robot inverse dynamics or inverse kinematic transformation. It is shown that the control strategies are globally stable in the presence of bounded disturbances, and that in the absence of disturbances the ultimate bound on the size of the tracking errors can be made arbitrarily small. Computer simulation results are given for a PUMA 560 manipulator, and demonstrate that accurate and robust trajectory tracking can be achieved by using the proposed controllers. Experimental results are presented for an IMI Zebra Zero manipulator and confirm that the control schemes provide a simple and effective means of obtaining high-performance trajectory tracking. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Design and experimental validation of a second-order sliding-mode motion controller for robot manipulators

This article presents an original motion control strategy for robot manipulators based on the coupling of the inverse dynamics method with the so-called second-order sliding mode control approach. Using this method, in principle, all the coupling non-linearities in the dynamical model of the manipulator are compensated, transforming the multi-input non-linear system into a linear and decoupled one. Actually, since the inverse dynamics relies on an identified model, some residual uncertain terms remain and perturb the linear and decoupled system. This motivates the use of a robust control design approach to complete the control scheme. In this article the sliding mode control methodology is adopted. Sliding mode control has many appreciable features, such as design simplicity and robustness versus a wide class of uncertainties and disturbances. Yet conventional sliding mode control seems inappropriate to be applied in robotics since it can generate the so-called chattering effect, which can be destructive for the controlled robot. In this article, this problem is suitably circumvented by designing a second-order sliding mode controller capable of generating a continuous control law making the proposed sliding mode controller actually applicable to industrial robots. To build the inverse dynamics part of the proposed controller, a suitable dynamical model of the system has been formulated, and its parameters have been accurately identified relying on a practical MIMO identification procedure recently devised. The proposed inverse dynamics-based second-order sliding mode controller has been experimentally tested on a COMAU SMART3-S2 industrial manipulator, demonstrating the tracking properties and the good performances of the controlled system.     

A new class of adaptive controllers for robot trajectory tracking

This article presents a new class of adaptive schemes for the motion control of robot manipulators. The proposed controllers are very general and computationally efficient because they do not require knowledge of either the mathematical model or the parameter values of the manipulator dynamics, and are implemented without calculation of the robot inverse dynamics or inverse kinematic transformations. It is shown that the control strategies are globally uniformly bounded in the presence of bounded disturbances, and that in the absence of disturbances the ultimate bound on the size of the tracking errors can be made arbitrarily small. Computer simulation results are given for a PUMA 560 manipulator, and demonstrate that accurate and robust trajectory tracking can be achieved by using the proposed controllers. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Decentralized adaptive control of electrically-driven manipulators

This paper presents two new decentralized strategies for motion control of uncertain electrically-driven manipulators. The first controller is an adaptive position regulation scheme which ensures semiglobal asymptotic convergence of the position error if no external disturbances are present and semiglobal convergence of the error to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of zero in the presence of bounded disturbances. It is shown that the regulation scheme can be modified to provide accurate trajectory tracking control through the introduction of adaptive feedforward elements in the control law; this second control strategy retains the simple decentralized structure of the first controller and ensures arbitrarily accurate tracking in the presence of bounded disturbances. Each of the adaptive schemes is very efficient computationally and requires virtually no information concerning either the manipulator or actuator models. The results of computer simulations and laboratory experiments with both terrestrial and space manipulators demonstrate that accurate and robust motion control can be achieved by using the proposed approach.     

Decentralized adaptive control of robot manipulators

A decentralized adaptive control scheme is proposed for the trajectory tracking of a general n-degree-of-freedom robot manipulator. The robot is considered as a set of decoupled second-order systems with disturbances. The controller consists of feedforward from the desired trajectory based on the “inverse system” of the model, PID feedback from the actual trajectory, and auxiliary input for the compensation of the neglected terms in modeling in each subsystem. The gain is derived in diagonal matrix form, and is adjusted by the model reference adaptive control theory based on the Lyapunov's direct method. The result is high accuracy in path tracking despite the high speed, load change, and sudden torque disturbances. Numerical simulations on.a planar two-link robot manipulator are presented to show the performance under various practical considerations.     

Robot learning control based on recurrent neural network inverse model

A non-linear model-based feedforward, feedback, and learning controller is presented. This controller can control a non-linear plant such as a robot whose dynamics are initially unknown. In the feedforward part, a recurrent neural network (RNN) is used to model the inverse dynamics of the plant. In the feedback part, a PD controller is added to handle unmodeled dynamics and disturbances. Furthermore, an add-on learning controller is established to reduce tracking errors for repetitive tasks. The controller is validated with the control of a simulated two-joint manipulator. Simulation results show that the controller can successfully learn the inverse dynamics of a robot, perform accurate tracking for a general trajectory, and improve its own performance over the repetitions of a trajectory, with and without a payload change. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Nonlinear robust adaptive Cartesian impedance control of UAVs equipped with a robot manipulator

In this paper, a new nonlinear robust adaptive impedance controller is addressed for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a robot manipulator that physically interacts with environment. A UAV equipped with a robot manipulator is a novel system that can perform different tasks instead of human being in dangerous and/or inaccessible environments. The objective of the proposed robust adaptive controller is control of the UAV and its robotic manipulator’s end-effector impedance in Cartesian space in order to have a stable physical interaction with environment. The proposed controller is robust against parametric uncertainties in the nonlinear dynamics model of the UAV and the robot manipulator. Moreover, the controller has robustness against the bounded force sensor inaccuracies and bounded unstructured modeling (nonparametric) uncertainties and/or disturbances in the system. Tracking performance and stability of the system are proved via Lyapunov stability theorem. Using simulations on a quadrotor UAV equipped with a three-DOF robot manipulator, the effectiveness of the proposed robust adaptive impedance controller is investigated in the presence of the force sensor error, and parametric and non-parametric uncertainties.     

Learning Control of Robot Manipulators in Task Space

Two important properties of industrial tasks performed by robot manipulators, namely, periodicity (i.e., repetitive nature) of the task and the need for the task to be performed by the end‐effector, motivated this work. Not being able to utilize the robot manipulator dynamics due to uncertainties complicated the control design. In a seemingly novel departure from the existing works in the literature, the tracking problem is formulated in the task space and the control input torque is aimed to decrease the task space tracking error directly without making use of inverse kinematics at the position level. A repetitive learning controller is designed which “learns” the overall uncertainties in the robot manipulator dynamics. The stability of the closed‐loop system and asymptotic end‐effector tracking of a periodic desired trajectory are guaranteed via Lyapunov based analysis methods. Experiments performed on an in‐house developed robot manipulator are presented to illustrate the performance and viability of the proposed controller.     

Adaptive output feedback tracking control of robot manipulators using position measurements only

In this paper, a new adaptive neuro controller for trajectory tracking is developed for robot manipulators without velocity measurements, taking into account the actuator constraints. The controller is based on structural knowledge of the dynamics of the robot and measurements of joint positions only. The system uncertainty, which may include payload variation, unknown nonlinearities and torque disturbances is estimated by a Chebyshev neural network (CNN). The adaptive controller represents an amalgamation of a filtering technique to generate pseudo filtered tracking error signals (for the elimination of velocity measurements) and the theory of function approximation using CNN. The proposed controller ensures the local asymptotic stability and the convergence of the position error to zero. The proposed controller is robust not only to structured uncertainty such as payload variation but also to unstructured one such as disturbances. Moreover the computational complexity of the proposed controller is reduced as compared to the multilayered neural network controller. The validity of the control scheme is shown by simulation results of a two-link robot manipulator. Simulation results are also provided to compare the proposed controller with a controller where velocity is estimated by finite difference methods using position measurements only.     

Adaptive inverse dynamics control of robots with uncertain kinematics and dynamics

It has been about two decades since the first globally convergent adaptive tracking controller was derived for robots with dynamic uncertainties. However, not until recently has the problem of concurrent adaptation to both the kinematic and dynamic uncertainties found its solution. This adaptive controller belongs to passivity-based control. Though passivity-based controllers have many attractive properties, in general, they are not able to guarantee the uniform performance of the robot over the entire workspace. Even in the ideal case of perfect knowledge of the manipulator parameters, the closed-loop system remains nonlinear and coupled. Thus the closed-loop tracking performance is difficult to quantify, while the inverse dynamics controllers can overcome these deficiencies. Therefore, in this work, we will develop a new adaptive Jacobian tracking controller based on the inverse manipulator dynamics. Using the Lyapunov approach, we have proved that the end-effector motion tracking errors converge asymptotically to zero. Simulation results are presented to show the performance of the proposed controller.     

机械手的模糊逆模型鲁棒控制

提出一种基于模糊聚类和滑动模控制的模糊逆模型控制方法,并将其应用于动力学 方程未知的机械手轨迹控制.首先,采用C均值聚类算法构造两关节机械手的高木-关野 (T-S)模糊模型,并由此构造模糊系统的逆模型.然后,在提出的模糊逆模型控制结构中, 离散时间滑动模控制和时延控制(TDC)用于补偿模糊建模误差和外扰动,保证系统的全局 稳定性并改进其动态和稳态性能.系统的稳定性和轨迹误差的收敛性可以通过稳定性定理来 证明.最后,以两关节机械手的轨迹跟随控制为例,揭示了该设计方法的控制性能.     

Adaptive Jacobian force/position tracking for space free-flying robots with prescribed transient performance

This paper presents a tracking control with guaranteed prescribed performance (PP) for space free-flying robots with uncertain kinematics (Jacobian matrix) and dynamics, uncertain normal force parameter, and bounded disturbances in a compliant contact with a planar surface. Given the orientation of the surface and a nonlinear model of the elastic force, a controller is designed requiring no information on the robot parameters and the disturbances. This controller will guarantee that the tracking errors satisfy PP indexes such as the maximum steady-state errors and overshoots, and the minimum convergence rates. Thus, contact maintenance can be ensured as prescribed. An approximation of the Jacobian is utilized in the presence of uncertain robot kinematics, and PP position/attitude tracking of the free-flying base is achieved in addition to the PP force/position tracking of the manipulator’s fingertip. The proposed controller is based on an error transformation technique, and a directly tunable gain for the transformed error feedback is introduced in the control to trade off between the tracking performance and control effort. Numerical simulations and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed controller.     

弧焊机器人焊缝跟踪神经网络控制器

介绍了一种能提高高弧焊机器人焊缝跟踪精度的神经网络控制器,通过神经网络的补偿作用,弥补了由于无法知道机器人精确模型所造成的控制上的误差,不同于机器人控制中传统的网络控制器,本文提出并应用了基于笛卡尔空间轨迹控制的机器人焊缝跟踪神经网络,大大简化了控制算法,计算机模拟及实验表明,该控制器非常适用于只的实际焊接,对于现有机器人,无须改变其控制器内部结构,即可应用该技术,与常用的机器人关节力矩控制法相比     

Boundary Control of a Flexible Robotic Manipulator With Output Constraints

In this study, we consider a boundary control problem of a flexible manipulator with input disturbances and output constraints, achieving pre‐set performance attributes on position tracking error and the deflection error at the end of the beam. The dynamics of the system are represented by partial differential equations (PDEs). With the Lyapunov's direct method, a boundary controller with disturbance observer is designed to regulate the angular position and suppress elastic vibration simultaneously. The proposed control scheme allows the errors to converge to an arbitrarily small residual set, with convergence rate larger than a pre‐specified value. Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

带有未知参数和有界干扰的移动机器人轨迹跟踪控

针对模型参数未知和存在有界干扰的非完整移动机器人的轨迹跟踪控制问题,本文提出了一种鲁棒自适应轨迹跟踪控制器方法.非完整移动机器人的控制难点在于它的运动学系统是欠驱动的.针对这一难点,本文利用横截函数的思想,引入新的辅助控制器,使得非完整移动机器人系统不再是一个欠驱动系统,缩减了控制器设计的难度,进而利用非线性自适应算法和参数映射方法构造李雅谱诺夫函数.通过李雅普诺夫方法设计控制器和参数自适应器,从而使得非完整移动机器人的跟随误差任意小,即可以任意小的误差来跟随任意给定的参考轨迹.仿真结果证明了方法的有效性.     

Fuzzy-Basis-Function-Network-Based $H_infty$ Tracking Control for Robotic Manipulators Using Only Position Feedback

This paper presents an H _infin fuzzy output-feedback tracking-control scheme for robotic manipulators without measuring joint velocities. The developed controller and observer are based on a fuzzy basis function network (FBFN), which is employed to approximate nonlinear functions in the dynamics of controller and observer. The FBFN-based observer that estimates joint velocities can remove the needs of full-state measurements. According to the inevitable approximation errors and external disturbances, an H _infin auxiliary control signal is used to suppress the effects of the uncertainties. Moreover, all parameters of the fuzzy basis functions (FBFs) and FBF-to-output weights can be tuned online. The proposed controller requires no prior knowledge about the dynamics of the robot manipulator and no offline learning phase. Finally, comparative simulations on a three-link robot manipulator are provided to illustrate the tracking performance of the H _infin FBFN-based output-feedback control approach.     

Position control of very lightweight single-link flexible arms with large payload variations by using disturbance observers

In this article, a robust control scheme for trajectory tracking of very lightweight single-link flexible arms is discussed. Since the payload is one of the most variable parameters in a manipulator, the control is designed to achieve an accurate tracking of the desired tip trajectory for any value of the robot tip mass, or even for a tip mass changing during the maneuver. The proposed controller also guarantees stability for small uncertainties in parameters such as stiffness or motor friction. In addition, the effect of spillover on the performance of the controlled system is analyzed, and it is proven that stability and a good performance are preserved independently from the non-modeled high-order dynamics. The control scheme is based on a two nested loops structure. Each of these loops implements a Generalized Proportional Integral (GPI) controller. Moreover, the outer loop includes a disturbance compensation term based on a disturbance observer, which achieves the required insensitivity to payload changes. The theoretical analysis is supported by an extensive set of numerical simulations which shows controlled system response when variations in the robot payload, or dynamics neglected in the controller design, are considered. Finally, some experiments have been carried out in order to test the performance of the tip trajectory tracking of the proposed control system.     

柔性机械臂基于观测的逆动力学轨迹跟踪控制

本文探讨了稳定逆动力学与基于观测的状态误差反馈镇定器集成实现柔性机械臂 末端轨迹跟踪的控制策略．基于观测器可以充分利用由稳定逆动力学生成的理想状态轨迹信 息,实现全状态误差的反馈镇定以消除末端轨迹跟踪的扰动误差．