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 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.     

Adaptive Jacobian position/force tracking control of free-flying manipulators

This paper solves the problem of position/force tracking control of a free-flying space manipulator with uncertain kinematics and dynamics. A free-flying manipulator interacting with an uncertain compliant surface is considered. To cope with the uncertainties arising from free-flyer’s kinematics, dynamics and surface stiffness and position, an adaptive Jacobian controller is devised. The convergence of the force and position tracking errors is proved based on Lyapunov stability analysis. Numerical simulation is presented to show the performance of the controller.     

Adaptive Jacobian tracking control of robots with uncertainties in kinematic, dynamic and actuator models

Most research so far on robot trajectory control has assumed that the kinematics of the robot is known exactly. However, when a robot picks up tools of uncertain lengths, orientations, or gripping points, the overall kinematics becomes uncertain and changes according to different tasks. Recently, we derived a new adaptive Jacobian tracking controller for robots with uncertain kinematics and dynamics. This note extends the results to include redundant robots and adaptation to actuator parameters. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed controller.     

Robust controller design for a class of nonlinear robot manipulators with actuator dynamics

A robust controller is proposed to achieve accurate tracking for a class of nonlinear uncertain robot manipulators with actuator dynamics. A dynamic model is derived that incorporates the manipulator dynamics with the actuator dynamics. The parameter uncertainty in the model is quantified using the linear parameterization technique. The proposed switching controller guarantees the global asymptotic stability. To rectify the chattering caused by the switching action of the controller, the controller is modified into a smoothed form by putting a boundary layer around the sliding surface. It is shown that the smoothing controller guarantees the uniform ultimate boundedness of the actual trajectory. Simulation results show the feasibility and excellent tracking performance of the controller.     

Adaptive stabilization and tracking control of electrically driven manipulators

This article presents two new adaptive strategies for motion control of uncertain rigid-link, electrically driven manipulators. The first controller is a position regulation scheme that ensures (semiglobal) asymptotic convergence of the position error if no external disturbances are present, and convergence 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 structure of the first controller and ensures arbitrarily accurate tracking in the presence of bounded disturbances. Each of the adaptive schemes is computationally efficient and requires virtually no information concerning either the manipulator or actuator models. Computer simulation results are given for a PUMA 560 manipulator and demonstrate that accurate and robust motion control can be achieved by using the proposed controllers. Experimental results are presented for an IMI Zebra Zero manipulator and confirm that the proposed approach provides a simple and effective means of obtaining high performance motion control. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Motion/force control scheme for electrically driven cooperative multiple mobile manipulators

This paper presents the motion and force control problem of rigid-link electrically driven cooperative mobile manipulators handling a rigid object. Although, the motion/force control problem of cooperative mobile manipulators has been enthusiastically studied. But there is little research on the motion/force control of electrically driven cooperative mobile manipulators. Due to the inclusion of the actuator dynamics with the manipulator’s dynamics, the controller exhibits some important characteristics. For the electromechanical system, we have designed a novel controller at the dynamic level as well as at the actuator level. In the proposed control scheme, at the dynamic level, uncertain non-linear mechanical dynamics is approximated with a hybrid controller containing model-based control scheme combined with model-free neural network based control scheme together with an adaptive bound. The adaptive bound is used to suppress the effects of external disturbances, friction terms, and reconstruction error of the neural network. At the actuator level, for the approximation of the unknown electrical dynamics, the model-free neural network is utilized. The developed control scheme provides that the position tracking errors, as well as the internal force, converge to the desired levels. Additionally, direct current motors are also controlled in such a way that the desired currents and torques can be attained. In order to make the overall system to be asymptotically stable, online learning of the weights and the parameter adaptation of the parameters is utilized in the Lyapunov function. The superiority of the developed control method is carried out with the numerical simulation results and its superior robustness is shown in a comparative manner.     

Adaptive Task-Space Control of Flexible-Joint Manipulators

This paper considers the motion control and compliance control problemsfor uncertain rigid-link, flexible-joint manipulators, and presents newadaptive task-space controllers as solutions to these problems. The motioncontrol strategy is simple and computationally efficient, requires littleinformation concerning either the manipulator or actuator/transmissionmodels, and ensures uniform boundedness of all signals and arbitrarilyaccurate task-space trajectory tracking. The proposed compliant motioncontrollers include an adaptive impedance control scheme, which isappropriate for tasks in which the dynamic character of theend-effector/environment interaction must be controlled, and an adaptiveposition/force controller, which is useful for those applications thatrequire independent control of end-effector position and contact force. Thecompliance control strategies retain the simplicity and model independenceof the trajectory tracking scheme upon which they are based, and are shownto ensure uniform boundedness of all signals and arbitrarily accuraterealization of the given compliance control objectives. The capabilities ofthe proposed control strategies are illustrated through computer simulationswith a robot manipulator possessing very flexible joints.     

An Intelligent Robust Tracking Control for a Class of Electrically Driven Mobile Robots

This paper addresses the problem of designing robust tracking control for a class of uncertain wheeled mobile robots actuated by brushed direct current motors. This class of electrically‐driven mechanical systems consists of the robot kinematics, the robot dynamics, and the wheel actuator dynamics. Via the backstepping technique, an intelligent robust tracking control scheme that integrates a kinematic controller and an adaptive neural network‐based (or fuzzy‐based) controller is developed such that all of the states and signals of the closed‐loop system are bounded and the tracking error can be made as small as possible. Two adaptive approximation systems are constructed to learn the behaviors of unknown mechanical and electrical dynamics. The effects of both the approximation errors and the unmodeled time‐varying perturbations in the input and virtual‐input weighting matrices are counteracted by suitably tuning the control gains. Consequently, the robust control scheme developed here can be employed to handle a broader class of electrically‐driven wheeled mobile robots in the presence of high‐degree time‐varying uncertainties. Finally, a simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed control scheme.     

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.     

Robust adaptive fault tolerant control for a process with actuator faults

This paper studies design and implementation of an enhanced multivariable adaptive control scheme for an uncertain nonlinear process exposed to actuator faults. For adaptive fault compensation, a model reference adaptive control (MRAC) strategy is utilized as main controller. A new adaptation algorithm making possible to improve transient performance of adaptive control is integrated to the controller. With the help of further modifications, some restrictive conditions on multivariable adaptive design are relaxed so that the system requires less plant information. The resulting controller has a simpler structure than the other matrix factorization based controllers. At the final stage of design, a robust adaptive control scheme is obtained with consideration of practical implementation problems such as sensor noises, external disturbances and unmodeled​ system dynamics. It is proved that the controller guarantees closed-loop signal boundedness and asymptotic output tracking. Real-time experiment results acquired from quadruple tank benchmark system are presented in order to exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Dynamics and control of a novel 3-DOF parallel manipulator with actuation redundancy

This paper deals with the dynamics and control of a novel 3-degrees-of-freedom （DOF） parallel manipulator with actuation redundancy. According to the kinematics of the redundant manipulator, the inverse dynamic equation is formulated in the task space by using the Lagrangian formalism, and the driving force is optimized by utilizing the minimal 2-norm method. Based on the dynamic model, a synchronized sliding mode control scheme based on contour error is proposed to implement accurate motion tracking control. Additionally, an adaptive method is introduced to approximate the lumped uncertainty of the system and provide a chattering-free control. The simulation results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches and demonstrate the satisfactory tracking performance compared to the conventional controller in the presence of the parameter uncertainties and un-modelled dynamics for the motion control of manipulators.     

Adaptive actuator failure compensation for multivariable feedback linearizable systems

A feedback linearization‐based adaptive control scheme is developed for multivariable nonlinear systems with redundant actuators subject to uncertain failures. Such an adaptive controller contains a direct adaptive actuator failure compensator to compensate the uncertain actuator failure, a nonlinear feedback to linearize the nonlinear dynamics, and a linear feedback to stabilize the linearized system. The key new design feature is the estimation of both the failure patterns and the failure values, for direct adaptive actuator failure compensation, newly developed for multivariable feedback linearizable nonlinear systems. With direct control signal adaptation, the adaptive failure compensation design ensures closed‐loop stability and asymptotic output tracking in the presence of actuator failure uncertainties. Simulation results from an application to attitude control of a near‐space vehicle dynamic model are presented to verify the desired system performance with adaptive actuator failure compensation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

动力定位船轨迹跟踪鲁棒自适应容错控制

本文研究了输入饱和状态下的动力定位船故障容错鲁棒自适应控制问题.该问题以动力定位船轨迹跟踪任务为目标,提出了一种新颖的鲁棒自适应控制器的设计,并且引入了二阶快速非奇异终端滑模和神经网络控制算法保证了控制器在实际任务中的执行效果.首先,介绍了三自由度动力定位船的运动模型包括了运动学模型和动力学模型以及推进器故障模型.然后,设计了二阶快速非奇异终端滑模面,提出了一种针对时变扰动和模型不确定性的鲁棒控制方案,保证系统无抖振现象的前提下实现了系统更快的收敛速度.同时运用被动容错控制思想,确保动力定位船在推进器故障发生时依然能够实现预计的跟踪性能.此外,通过Lyapunov稳定性判据分析,证明了提出的改进自适应滑模控制方法可确保系统在初始状态未知前提下,跟踪误差渐近收敛于零.最后,通过数值仿真实验结果验证了控制律的有效性.     

Sliding mode-based adaptive tube model predictive control for robotic manipulators with model uncertainty and state constraints

In this paper, the optimal tracking control for robotic manipulatorswith state constraints and uncertain dynamics is investigated, and a sliding mode-based adaptive tube model predictive control method is proposed. First, utilizing the high-order fully actuated system approach, the nominal model of the robotic manipulator is constructed as the predictive model. Based on the nominal model, a nominal model predictive controller with the sliding mode is designed, which relaxes the terminal constraints, and realizes the accurate and stable tracking of the desired trajectory by the nominal system. Then, an auxiliary controller based on the node-adaptive neural networks is constructed to dynamically compensate nonlinear uncertain dynamics of the robotic manipulator. Furthermore, the estimation deviation between the nominal and actual states is limited to the tube invariant sets. At the same time, the recursive feasibility of nominal model predictive control is verified, and the ultimately uniformly boundedness of all variables is proved according to the Lyapunov theorem. Finally, experiments show that the robotic manipulator can achieve fast and efficient trajectory tracking under the action of the proposed method.     

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.     

Adaptive robust fuzzy control for path tracking of a wheeled mobile robot

This paper proposes an adaptive robust fuzzy control scheme for path tracking of a wheeled mobile robot with uncertainties. The robot dynamics including the actuator dynamics is considered in this work. The presented controller is composed of a fuzzy basis function network (FBFN) to approximate an unknown nonlinear function of the robot complete dynamics, an adaptive robust input to overcome the uncertainties, and a stabilizing control input. The stability and the convergence of the tracking errors are guaranteed using the Lyapunov stability theory. When the controller is designed, the different parameters for two actuator models in the dynamic equation are taken into account. The proposed control scheme does not require the accurate parameter values for the actuator parameters as well as the robot parameters. The validity and robustness of the proposed control scheme are demonstrated through computer simulations. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

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.     

Robust adaptive control of a robotic manipulator including motor dynamics

An adaptive nonlinear control law that incorporates the manipulator dynamics as well as dynamics of the actuator is developed in this article. The proposed adaptive robust tracking controller requires position measurements only. The controller consists of two parts: a linear observer that generates an estimated error from the error on the joint position, together with a linear feedback controller that utilizes the estimated states. The second part is an adaptive controller that utilizes the feedback states from the linear observer to generate a control effort that takes into consideration the dynamic parameters variation of the robot and actuator. The closed loop system is locally stable in the Lyapunov sense. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.