A study on constructing a neuro-interface using the concept of a virtual master–slave system

To ease the control of a nonholonomic robot by a non-expert, a neuro-interface is proposed by using the concept of a virtual master–slave system. The design procedure for the interface is elaborated for the control of nonholonomic two-wheeled robots. In particular, it is shown that if the coordinate transformation from the slave to the master is assumed to be known, the resultant inverse mapping of the master robot can be simply realized by a neural network (NN) with all linear units. The training of the NN is performed by an offline method. As a result, the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown for some simulations to solve a trajectory tracking control problem with a nonholonomic mobile robot.This work was presented, in part, at the 9th International Symposium on Artifical Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 28–30, 2004