Cooperative manipulation of a floating object by some space robots: application of a tracking control method using the transpose of the generalized Jacobian matrix

In future space missions, it is considered that many tasks will be achieved by cooperative motions of space robots. For free-floating space robots with manipulators, we have proposed a digital tracking control method using the transpose of the generalized Jacobian matrix (GJM). In this paper, the tracking control method using the transpose of the GJM is applied to cooperative manipulations of a floating object by space robots. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the control method. This work was presented in part at the 12th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 25–27, 2007     

Digital tracking control of space robots using a transpose of the generalized Jacobian matrix

We have proposed discrete time-control methods using the transpose of the generalized Jacobian matrix (GJM) for free-floating space robots having manipulators. The control methods are robust for singular configurations of robots. Since the methods belong to a class of constant-value control, in this article we propose a digital trajectory tracking control method using the transpose of the GJM. Computer simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method. This work was presented in part at the 11th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 23–25, 2006     

Digital control of space robot manipulators with velocity type joint controller using transpose of generalized Jacobian matrix

For free floating space robots having manipulators, we have proposed a discrete-time tracking control method using the transpose of Generalized Jacobian Matrix (GJM). Control inputs of the control method are joint torques of the manipulator. In this paper, the control method is augmented for angular velocity inputs of the joints. Computer simulations have shown the effectiveness of the augmented method. This work was presented in part and awarded as Best Paper Award at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

High‐gain nonlinear observer‐based impedance control for deformable object cooperative teleoperation with nonlinear contact model

Unmeasurable object deformation and local communication time delays between the slave robots influence the manipulation effect for multirobot multioperator teleoperation. In this article, a distributed control method based on high‐gain nonlinear observer, interactive identification, and impedance control is proposed for this problem. First, we use Hunt‐Crossley contact model and deduce the desired synchronizing object state in cooperative teleoperation. Second, an impedance item expressed by the internal position errors is presented to decrease object position tracking errors. For the unmeasurable object deformation, an interactive identification method is proposed for estimating unknown variables. Third, we consider both varying communication time delays and local time delays in the slave side. Two mirror high‐gain nonlinear observers are designed for estimating other slave robots' real‐time state. Finally, we build the system controllers and prove the stability of the closed‐loop system and the boundless of estimating errors using Lyapunov functions. Comparable simulation results executed by the physical system present that the position and internal force tracking errors of the object decrease in the designated cooperative tasks.     

Adaptive control of redundant multiple robots in cooperative motion

A redundant robot has more degrees of freedom than what is needed to uniquely position the robot end-effector. In practical applications the extra degrees of freedom increase the orientation and reach of the robot. Also the load carrying capacity of a single robot can be increased by cooperative manipulation of the load by two or more robots. In this paper, we develop an adaptive control scheme for kinematically redundant multiple robots in cooperative motion.In a usual robotic task, only the end-effector position trajectory is specified. The joint position trajectory will therefore be unknown for a redundant multi-robot system and it must be selected from a self-motion manifold for a specified end-effector or load motion. In this paper, it is shown that the adaptive control of cooperative multiple redundant robots can be addressed as a reference velocity tracking problem in the joint space. A stable adaptive velocity control law is derived. This controller ensures the bounded estimation of the unknown dynamic parameters of the robots and the load, the exponential convergence to zero of the velocity tracking errors, and the boundedness of the internal forces. The individual robot joint motions are shown to be stable by decomposing the joint coordinates into two variables, one which is homeomorphic to the load coordinates, the other to the coordinates of the self-motion manifold. The dynamics on the self-motion manifold are directly shown to be related to the concept of zero-dynamics. It is shown that if the reference joint trajectory is selected to optimize a certain type of objective functions, then stable dynamics on the self-motion manifold result. The overall stability of the joint positions is established from the stability of two cascaded dynamic systems involving the two decomposed coordinates.     

A family of virtual contraction based controllers for tracking of flexible‐joints port‐Hamiltonian robots: Theory and experiments

In this work, we present a constructive method to design a family of virtual contraction based controllers that solve the standard trajectory tracking problem of flexible‐joint robots in the port‐Hamiltonian framework. The proposed design method, called virtual contraction based control, combines the concepts of virtual control systems and contraction analysis. It is shown that under potential energy matching conditions, the closed‐loop virtual system is contractive and exponential convergence to a predefined trajectory is guaranteed. Moreover, the closed‐loop virtual system exhibits properties such as structure preservation, differential passivity, and the existence of (incrementally) passive maps. The method is later applied to a planar RR robot, and two nonlinear tracking control schemes in the developed controllers family are designed using different contraction analysis approaches. Experiments confirm the theoretical results for each controller.     

Robust Formation Control of Multiple Wheeled Mobile Robots

This paper considers formation control of a group of wheeled mobile robots with uncertainty. Decentralized cooperative robust controllers are proposed in two steps. In the first step, cooperative control laws are proposed for multiple kinematic systems with the aid of results from graph theory such that a group of robots comes into a desired formation. In the second step, cooperative robust control laws for multiple uncertain dynamic systems are proposed with the aid of backstepping techniques and the passivity properties of the dynamic systems such that multiple robots comes into a desired formation. Since communication delay is inevitable in cooperative control, its effect on the proposed controllers is analyzed. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.     

Inverse dynamics of articulated flexible structures: Simultaneous trajectory tracking and vibration reduction

This paper addresses the problem of inverse dynamics for articulated flexible structures with both lumped and distributed actuators. This problem arises, for example, in the combined vibration minimization and trajectory control of space robots and structures. For such flexible structures, closed loop passive joint based controllers have been shown to be effective in trajectory control by Paden et al. Crucial to the development of such closed loop controllers, which are robust to external perturbations, is the problem of dynamic inversion which yields the nominal state trajectories and the feedforward inputs. In this paper we propose a new inverse dynamics scheme for computing the nominal lumped and distributed feedforward inputs for tracking a prescribed trajectory.     

机器人鲁棒控制器参数演化设计

论文将讨论具有控制输入幅值限制的机器人轨迹跟踪控制问题。将利用基于信号补偿的鲁棒控制方法设计机器人的子关节系统控制器。该控制器由标称控制器和鲁棒补偿器组成。标称控制器对于一标称受控对象实现所希望的轨迹跟踪特性,鲁棒补偿器则用于减小实际受控对象和标称受控对象之间的差异对跟踪特性的影响。当输入存在饱和约束的情况下,对鲁棒补偿器进行了修改,并且基于演化寻优的方法求取鲁棒补偿器参数。     

Parametric Planning for Multiple Cooperative Robots

A novel planning strategy, parametric planning, is proposed to negotiate the task-oriented object manipulation of multiple coordinated robots. The approach provides an advantage to improve flexibility of robotic cooperation, in which the desired trajectories in Cartesian space derived from task requirements are converted into the trajectories of robots in joint space for a fixed-coordinated multi-robot system. For this purpose, a parametric cooperative index matrix is introduced to handle the relationship of the input desired Cartesian trajectories and the position of robots. A case study of 2-dimension object-motion trajectory tracking using four robots is presented in the end. It proved that the proposed approach effectively delivers trajectory task requirements to the joint trajectories of robots.     

Distributed tracking control of networked chained systems

This paper considers distributed tracking control of multiple nonholonomic chained systems using neighbours’ information. With the aid of the cascade structure of each system and properties of persistently excited signals, distributed state feedback tracking controllers and distributed output feedback tracking controllers are proposed such that the tracking errors exponentially converge to zero. To show applications of the proposed results, formation control of wheeled mobile robots is considered. Distributed controllers are obtained with the aid of the proposed theorems. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed results.     

单向通信拓扑领航者动态未知线性多智能体系统的协同迭代学习控制

研究单向通信拓扑领航者动态未知线性多智能体系统的协同跟踪问题.基于邻居的相对状态信息,设计了分布式迭代学习控制律实现对领航者的协同跟踪控制,采用Lyapunov-Krasovskii函数分析闭环系统的稳定性与收敛性.进而,将状态反馈结论拓展到输出反馈,通过构造局部观测器估计不可量测的状态信息,采用估计的相对状态信息设计了分布式迭代学习控制器.对于以上两种情形,多智能体系统在通讯拓扑含有生成树的条件下能够实现与领航者的状态同步,同时,所设计的分布式迭代学习律能够对领航者未知输入进行精确估计.仿真实例验证了所提方法的有效性.     

Coordination of Multiple Control Schemes for Mobile Robot Navigation on the Basis of the Generalized Stochastic Petri-Nets

There have been two major streams of research for the motion control of mobile robots: model-based deliberate control and sensor-based reactive control. Since the two schemes have complementary advantages and disadvantages, each cannot completely replace the other. There are a variety of environmental conditions that affect the performance of navigation. The motivation of this study is that multiple motion control schemes are required to survive in dynamic real environments. In this paper, we exploit two discrete motion controllers for mobile robots. One is the deliberate trajectory tracking controller and the other is the reactive dynamic window approach. We propose the selective coordination of two controllers on the basis of the generalized stochastic Petri net (GSPN) framework. The major scope of this paper is to clarify the advantage of the proposed controller based on the coordination of multiple controllers from the results of quantitative performance comparison among motion controllers. For quantitative comparison, both simulations and experiments in dynamic environments were carried out. In addition, it is shown that navigation experiences are accumulated in the GSPN formalism. The performance of navigation service can be significantly improved owing to the automatically stored experiences.     

随机激励下单杆柔性关节机械臂的建模与控制

机械系统如移动机器人、机械臂等在运动过程中通常会受到随机干扰.针对随机激励下单连杆柔性机械臂的数学建模和控制问题,目前还没有相关的研究.本文引入随机干扰,建立了一个具有未知参数的随机动力学模型.然后通过坐标变换,将该模型化成一个4阶系统.在此基础上,结合自适应理论,动态面方法和Lyapunov方法,设计了一种新的控制器.这种控制器有效地避免了传统方法中的过参数估计和复杂性爆炸的问题,同时可以保证跟踪误差在均方意义下任意小,且闭环系统的所有信号依概率有界.最后通过一个仿真例子验证了本文理论的有效性.     

Model-based,Distributed, and Cooperative Control of Planar Serial-link Manipulators

In this paper, we propose a novel distributed control scheme for a planar serial-link manipulator with revolute joints. The control scheme is based on the conventional model-based nonlinear control scheme that achieves linearization by feedback. A dedicated controller controls each joint of the manipulator, as in the case of the decentralized manipulator control scheme. However, in the proposed control scheme, the joint-level controllers communicate and cooperate to account for the nonlinear dynamic coupling between the links. The proposed control scheme can achieve the performance level of that of the model-based nonlinear control scheme, and at the same time, reduce the computational lead-time by distributing the computational load associated with the control law among the joint-level controllers. We design a distributed cooperative control law for a three-link planar manipulator and demonstrate its trajectory tracking performance using simulation experiments.

     

Bounded controllers for global path tracking control of unicycle-type mobile robots

This paper presents a design of bounded controllers with a predetermined bound for global path tracking control of unicycle-type mobile robots at the torque level. A new one-step ahead backstepping method is first introduced. The heading angle and linear velocity of the robots are then considered as immediate controls to force the position of the robots to globally and asymptotically track its reference path. These immediate controls are designed based on the one-step ahead backstepping method to yield bounded control laws. Next, the one-step ahead backstepping method is applied again to design bounded control torques of the robots with a pre-specified bound. The proposed control design ensures global asymptotical and local exponential convergence of the position and orientation tracking errors to zero, and bounded torques driving the robots. Experimental results on a Khepera mobile robot verify the proposed control controller.     

Human-like natural behavior generation based on involuntary motions for humanoid robots

Human behaviors consist of both voluntary and involuntary motions. Almost all behaviors of task-oriented robots, however, consist solely of voluntary motions. Involuntary motions are important for generating natural motions like those of humans. Thus, we propose a natural behavior generation method for humanoid robots that is a hybrid generation between voluntary and involuntary motions. The key idea of our method is to control robots with a hybrid controller that combines the functions of a communication behavior controller and body balancing controllers. We also develop a wheeled inverted pendulum type of humanoid robot, named “Robovie-III”, in order to generate involuntary motions like oscillation. By applying our method to this robot and conducting preliminary experiments, we verify its validity. Experimental results show that the robot generates both voluntary and involuntary motions.     

Practical consensus tracking control of multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots in polar coordinates

This paper proposes a sliding‐mode control (SMC) method to achieve practical cooperative consensus tracking for a network of multiple nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots (MNWMRs) with input disturbances. A novel SMC surface under the nonholonomic constraints is first formulated to characterize the network communication interactions among the networked robots under the framework of polar coordinates. A unified distributed consensus tracking strategy is then proposed by systematically combining a position controller and a direction controller. Furthermore, a simple yet general criterion is derived to achieve the desired practical consensus of trajectory tracking and posture stabilization for MNWMRs. In particular, for a specific common consensus trajectory, the complete asymptotic tracking in heading direction can be fully guaranteed when the perfect asymptotic position‐tracking errors are realized. Accordingly, the developed consensus tracking strategy for MNWMRs demonstrates some advantages of control performance including stability, robustness, and effectiveness over the existing control method proposed for their single‐robot counterparts. Some comparative simulation results are given to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative consensus control method.     

On the Passivity-Based Impedance Control of Flexible Joint Robots

In this paper, a novel type of impedance controllers for flexible joint robots is proposed. As a target impedance, a desired stiffness and damping are considered without inertia shaping. For this problem, two controllers of different complexity are proposed. Both have a cascaded structure with an inner torque feedback loop and an outer impedance controller. For the torque feedback, a physical interpretation as a scaling of the motor inertia is given, which allows to incorporate the torque feedback into a passivity-based analysis. The outer impedance control law is then designed differently for the two controllers. In the first approach, the stiffness and damping terms and the gravity compensation term are designed separately. This outer control loop uses only the motor position and velocity, but no noncollocated feedback of the joint torques or link side positions. In combination with the physical interpretation of torque feedback, this allows us to give a proof of the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system based on the passivity properties of the system. The second control law is a refinement of this approach, in which the gravity compensation and the stiffness implementation are designed in a combined way. Thereby, a desired static stiffness relationship is obtained exactly. Additionally, some extensions of the controller to viscoelastic joints and to Cartesian impedance control are given. Finally, some experiments with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) lightweight robots verify the developed controllers and show the efficiency of the proposed control approach.     

Sliding Mode and PI Controllers for Uncertain Flexible Joint Manipulator

This paper is dealing with the problem of tracking control for uncertain flexible joint manipulator robots driven by brushless direct current motor(BDCM). Flexibility of joint in the manipulator constitutes one of the most important sources of uncertainties. In order to achieve high performance, all parts of the manipulator including actuator have been modeled. To cancel the tracking error, a hysteresis current controller and speed controllers have been developed. To evaluate the effectiveness of speed controllers, a comparative study between proportional integral(PI) and sliding mode controllers has been performed. Finally, simulation results carried out in the Matlab simulink environment demonstrate the high precision of sliding mode controller compared with PI controller in the presence of uncertainties of joint flexibility.