Robust tracking control of a unicycle-type wheeled mobile manipulator using a hybrid sliding mode fuzzy neural network

This article presents a robust tracking controller for an uncertain mobile manipulator system. A rigid robotic arm is mounted on a wheeled mobile platform whose motion is subject to nonholonomic constraints. The sliding mode control (SMC) method is associated with the fuzzy neural network (FNN) to constitute a robust control scheme to cope with three types of system uncertainties; namely, external disturbances, modelling errors, and strong couplings in between the mobile platform and the onboard arm subsystems. All parameter adjustment rules for the proposed controller are derived from the Lyapunov theory such that the tracking error dynamics and the FNN weighting updates are ensured to be stable with uniform ultimate boundedness (UUB).     

Robust tracking control of nonholonomic dynamic systems with application to the bi-steerable mobile robot

A tracking controller for nonholonomic dynamic systems is proposed which allows global tracking of arbitrary reference trajectories and renders the closed loop system robust with respect to bounded disturbances. The controller is based on [Chwa, D. (2004). Sliding-mode tracking control of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots in polar coordinates. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 12(4), 637-644] and shows several generalizations and improvements. The control law for tracking of general nonholonomic systems using inverse kinematic models (IKM) and sliding surfaces is stated. Conditions are proven under which robust tracking is achieved for a specific system. Tracking control is applied to the bi-steerable mobile robot, and simulation results are presented.     

Robust adaptive control for mobile manipulators

This paper addresses the trajectory tracking control of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile manipulator with parameter uncertainties and disturbances. The proposed algorithm adopts a robust adaptive control strategy where parametric uncertainties are compensated by adaptive update techniques and the disturbances are suppressed. A kinematic controller is first designed to make the robot follow a desired end-effector and platform trajectories in task space coordinates simultaneously. Then, an adaptive control scheme is proposed, which ensures that the trajectories are accurately tracked even in the presence of external disturbances and uncertainties. The system stability and the convergence of tracking errors to zero are rigorously proven using Lyapunov theory. Simulations results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed robust adaptive control law in comparison with a sliding mode controller.     

Balancing and Trajectory Tracking of Two-Wheeled Mobile Robot Using Backstepping Sliding Mode Control: Design and Experiments

The key attributes of Two Wheeled Balancing Mobile Robots (TWBMRs) are nonholonomic constraints and inherent instability. This paper deals with the problem of balancing and trajectory tracking of TWBMR using backstepping Sliding Mode Controller (SMC). First, the mathematical representation of TWBMR is derived using Lagrangian method by incorporating the dynamics of DC motors. Then, a decoupling approach is applied for simplifying the dynamic equations. The backstepping SMC technique is finally adopted to achieve the balancing and trajectory tracking of the TWBMR, whereas both model uncertainties and exogenous disturbance are taken into account in the controller design methodology. In order to determine the velocity, the trajectory tracking is achieved by the kinematic control, which is a common backstepping controller. For the velocity convergence of TWBMR to the generated desired value, two SMCs are designed, in which the motors voltage are directly controlled as the control laws. Simplicity in practical implementation and control law, ability to overcome uncertainties and appropriate performance are the main advantages of the proposed controller. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through simulation and experimental results.     

Robust adaptive control for a nonholonomic mobile robot with unknown parameters

A robust adaptive controller for a nonholonomic mobile robot with unknown kinematic and dynamic parameters is proposed. A kinematic controller whose output is the input of the relevant dynamic controller is provided by using the concept of backstepping. An adaptive algorithm is developed in the kinematic controller to approximate the unknown kinematic parameters, and a simple single-layer neural network is used to express the highly nonlinear robot dynamics in terms of the known and unknown parameters. In order to attenuate the effects of the uncertainties and disturbances on tracking performance, a sliding mode control term is added to the dynamic controller. In the deterministic design of feedback controllers for the uncertain dynamic systems, upper bounds on the norm of the uncertainties are an important clue to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system. However, sometimes these upper bounds may not be easily obtained because of the complexity of the structure of the uncertainties. Thereby, simple adaptation laws are proposed to approximate upper bounds on the norm of the uncertainties to address this problem. The stability of the proposed control system is shown through the Lyapunov method. Lastly, a design example for a mobile robot with two actuated wheels is provided and the feasibility of the controller is demonstrated by numerical simulations.     

Adaptive tracking control for uncertain dynamic nonholonomic mobile robots based on visual servoing

The trajectory tracking control problem of dynamic nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots is considered via visual servoing feedback.A kinematic controller is firstly presented for the kinematic model,and ...     

Adaptive tracking control for uncertain dynamic nonholonomic mobile robots based on visual servoing

The trajectory tracking control problem of dynamic nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots is considered via visual servoing feedback. A kinematic controller is firstly presented for the kinematic model, and then, an adaptive sliding mode controller is designed for the uncertain dynamic model in the presence of parametric uncertainties associated with the camera system. The proposed controller is robust not only to structured uncertainties such as mass variation but also to unstructured one such as disturbances. The asymptotic convergence of tracking errors to equilibrium point is rigorously proved by the Lyapunov method. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the control law.     

Robust adaptive control of nonholonomic mobile robot with parameter and nonparameter uncertainties

This paper considers the tracking-control problem of a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot with both parameter and nonparameter uncertainties. A robust adaptive controller is proposed with the aid of the adaptive backstepping technique and the learning ability of neural networks. The proposed controller guarantees that the tracking error converges to a small hall containing the origin. The hall's radius can be adjusted by control parameters. The proposed controller is successfully implemented in our simulator.     

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.     

非完整移动机器人的神经网络鲁棒自适应控制

在非完整移动机器人轨迹跟踪问题中,针对机器人运动学与动力学模型的参数和非参数不确定性,提出了一种混合神经网络鲁棒自适应轨迹跟踪控制器,该控制器由运动学控制器和动力学控制器两部分组成;其中,采用了参数自适应的径向基神经网络对运动学模型的未知部分进行了建模,并采用权值在线调整的单层神经网络和自适应鲁棒控制项构成了动力学控制器;基于Lyapunov方法的设计过程保证了系统的稳定性和收敛性,仿真结果证明了算法的有效性。     

Adaptive sliding mode dynamic controller with integrator in the loop for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot trajectory tracking

In this paper, novel adaptive sliding mode dynamic controller with integrator in the loop is proposed for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot (WMR). The modified kinematics controller is used to generate kinematics velocities of WMR which are subsequently used as the input to adaptive dynamic controller. Actuator dynamics are also derived to generate actuator voltage of WMR through torque and velocity vectors. Stability of both kinematics and dynamic controller is presented using Lyapunov stability analysis. The proposed scheme is verified and validated using computer simulations for tracking the desired trajectory of WMR. The performance of proposed scheme is compared with standard backstepping kinematics controller and classical sliding mode control. In addition, the performance is further compared with standard backstepping kinematics controller with adaptive sliding mode controller without integrator. It is shown that the proposed scheme exhibits zero steady state error, fast error convergence and robustness in the presence of continuous disturbances and uncertainties.     

Motion Control of a Nonholonomic Mobile Manipulator in Task Space

In this paper, the motion control of a mobile manipulator subjected to nonholonomic constraints is investigated. The control objective is to design a computed‐torque controller based on the coupled dynamics of the mobile manipulator. The proposed controller achieves the capability of simultaneous tracking of a reference velocity for the mobile base and a reference trajectory for the end‐effector. The aforementioned reference velocity and trajectory are defined in the task space, such task setting imitates the actual working conditions of a mobile manipulator and thus makes the control problem practical. To solve this tracking problem, a steering velocity is firstly designed based on the first‐order kinematic model of the nonholonomic mobile base via dynamic feedback linearization. The main merit of the proposed steering velocity design is that it directly utilizes the reference velocity set in the task space without requiring the knowledge of a reference orientation. A torque controller is subsequently developed based on a proposed Lyapunov function which explicitly considers the coupled dynamics of the mobile manipulator to ensure the mobile base and end‐effector track the reference velocity and trajectory respectively. This proposed computed‐torque controller is able to realize asymptotic stability of both the base velocity tracking error and the end‐effector motion tracking error. Simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

含驱动器动力学的移动机器人编队自适应控制

针对含有驱动器及编队动力学的多非完整移动机器人编队控制问题,基于领航者-跟随者[l-ψ]控制结构,通过反步法设计了一种将运动学控制器与驱动器输入电压控制器相结合的新型控制策略。采用径向基神经网络（RBFNN）对跟随者及领航者动力学非线性不确定部分进行在线估计,并通过自适应鲁棒控制器对神经网络建模误差进行补偿。该方法不但解决了移动机器人编队控制的参数与非参数不确定性问题,同时也确保了机器人编队在期望队形下对指定轨迹的跟踪;基于Lyapunov方法的设计过程,保证了控制系统的稳定与收敛;仿真结果表明了该方法的有效性。     

Intelligent tracking control of a dual‐arm wheeled mobile manipulator with dynamic uncertainties

This paper presents an intelligent control approach that incorporates sliding mode control (SMC) and fuzzy neural network (FNN) into the implementation of back‐stepping control for a path tracking problem of a dual‐arm wheeled mobile manipulator subject to dynamic uncertainties and nonholonomic constraints. By using the back‐stepping technique, the system equations are reformulated into two levels: the kinematic level and the dynamic level. A sliding manifold is constructed by considering the disturbance free kinematic level equations only. With all the system uncertainties concentrated in the dynamic level, an FNN controller associated with a switching type of control law is employed to enforce sliding mode on the prescribed manifold. All parameter adjustment rules for the proposed controller are derived from the Lyapunov theory such that uniform ultimate boundedness for both the tracking error and the FNN weighting updates is ensured. A simulation study, which compares different control design approaches, is included to illustrate the promise of the proposed SMC–FNN method. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive fuzzy robust control of PMSM with smooth inverse based dead-zone compensation

It is a challenging work to design high precision/high performance motion controller for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) due to some difficulties, such as varying operating conditions, parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. In order to improve tracking control performance of PMSM, this paper proposes an adaptive fuzzy robust control (AFRC) algorithm with smooth inverse based dead-zone compensation. Instead of nonsmooth dead-zone inverse which would cause the possible control signal chattering phenomenon, a new smooth dead-zone inverse is proposed for non-symmetric dead-zone compensation in PMSM system. AFRC controller is synthesized by combining backstepping technique and small gain theorem. Discontinuous projectionbased parameter adaptive law is used to estimate unknown system parameters. The Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy logic systems are employed to approximate the unstructured dynamics. Robust control law ensures the robustness of closed loop control system. The proposed AFRC algorithm with smooth inverse based dead-zone compensation is verified on a practical PMSM control system. The comparative experimental results indicate that the smooth inverse for non-symmetric dead-zone nonlinearity can effectively avoid the chattering phenomenon which would be caused by nonsmooth dead-zone inverse, and the proposed control strategy can improve the PMSM output tracking performance.     

Adaptive observer-based trajectory tracking control of nonholonomic mobile robots

In this paper, an adaptive observer-based trajectory tracking problem is solved for nonholonomic mobile robots with uncertainties. An adaptive observer is first developed to estimate the unmeasured velocities of a mobile robot with model uncertainties. Using the designed observer and the backstepping technique, a trajectory tracking controller is designed to generate the torque as an input. Using Lyapunov stability analysis, we prove that the closed-loop system is asymptotically stable with respect to the estimation errors and tracking errors. Finally, the simulation results are presented to validate the performance and robustness of the proposed control system against uncertainties.     

Control of a nonholonomic mobile robot using neural networks

A control structure that makes possible the integration of a kinematic controller and a neural network (NN) computed-torque controller for nonholonomic mobile robots is presented. A combined kinematic/torque control law is developed using backstepping and stability is guaranteed by Lyapunov theory. This control algorithm can be applied to the three basic nonholonomic navigation problems: tracking a reference trajectory, path following, and stabilization about a desired posture. Moreover, the NN controller proposed in this work can deal with unmodeled bounded disturbances and/or unstructured unmodeled dynamics in the vehicle. Online NN weight tuning algorithms do not require off-line learning yet guarantee small tracking errors and bounded control signals are utilized.     

Distributed adaptive control for consensus tracking with application to formation control of nonholonomic mobile robots

In this paper, we investigate the output consensus problem of tracking a desired trajectory for a class of systems consisting of multiple nonlinear subsystems with intrinsic mismatched unknown parameters. The subsystems are allowed to have non-identical dynamics, whereas with similar structures and the same yet arbitrary system order. And the communication status among the subsystems can be represented by a directed graph. Different from the traditional centralized tracking control problem, only a subset of the subsystems can obtain the desired trajectory information directly. A distributed adaptive control approach based on backstepping technique is proposed. By introducing the estimates to account for the parametric uncertainties of the desired trajectory and its neighbors’ dynamics into the local controller of each subsystem, information exchanges of online parameter estimates and local synchronization errors among linked subsystems can be avoided. It is proved that the boundedness of all closed-loop signals and the asymptotically consensus tracking for all the subsystems’ outputs are ensured. A numerical example is illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. Moreover, the design strategy is successfully applied to solve a formation control problem for multiple nonholonomic mobile robots.     

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.     

Hybrid trigonometric compound function neural networks for tracking control of a nonholonomic mobile robot

The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid trigonometric compound function neural network (NN) to improve the NN-based tracking control performance of a nonholonomic mobile robot with nonlinear disturbances. In the mobile robot control system, two NN controllers embedded in the closed-loop control system have the simple continuous learning and rapid convergence capability without the dynamics information of the mobile robot to realize the tracking control of the mobile robot. The neuron functions of the hidden layer in the three-layer feedforward network structure consist of the compound cosine function and the compound sine function combining a cosine or a sine function with a unipolar sigmoid function. The main advantages of this NN-based mobile robot control system are better real-time control capability and control accuracy by use of the proposed NN controllers for a nonholonomic mobile robot with nonlinear disturbances. Through simulation experiments applied to the nonholonomic mobile robot with the nonlinear disturbances of dynamics uncertainty and external disturbances, the simulation results show that the proposed NN control system of a nonholonomic mobile robot has better real-time control capability and control accuracy than the compound cosine function NN control system of a nonholonomic mobile robot and then verify the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid trigonometric compound function NN controller for improving the tracking control performance of a nonholonomic mobile robot with nonlinear disturbances.