Active Vibration Control of Flexible Robots Using Virtual Spring-damper Systems

When using robots for heavy loads and huge operating ranges, elastic deformations of the links have to be taken into account during modeling and controller design. Whereas for conventional rigid multilink industrial robots modeling can schematically be done by standard techniques, it is a massive problem to obtain an accurate analytic model for multilink flexible robots. But an accurate analytic model is essential for most modern controller design techniques, and modeling errors can lead to instability of the controlled system due to spillover since the eigenvalues of the system are only slightly damped. A new approach to active damping control for flexible robots is presented in this paper where the actuators act like virtual spring-damper-systems. As the spring-damper-element is a passive energy dissipative device, it will never destabilize the system and thus the control concept will be very insensitive to modeling errors. Basically, the two parameters, spring stiffness and damping constant of this system, are arbitrary and model independent. To satisfy performance requirements they are adjusted using knowledge of the system model. The more it is known about the system model, the better these parameters may be adjusted. The new input of the controlled system is a virtual variation of the spring base. The paper illustrates this technique with the help of a simple and easy to model one link flexible robot which is also available as a real laboratory testbed.     

Contact Conditions for Cylindrical,Prismatic, and Screw Joints in Flexible Multibody Systems

This paper focuses on the modeling of the contact conditionsassociated with cylindrical, prismatic, and screw joints in flexiblemultibody systems. In the classical formulation these joints aredeveloped for rigid bodies, and kinematic constraints are enforcedbetween the kinematic variables of the two bodies. These constraintsexpress the conditions for relative translation and rotation of the twobodies along and about a body-fixed axis, and imply the relative slidingand rotation of the two bodies which remain in constant contact witheach other. However, these kinematic constraints no longer implyrelative sliding with contact when one of the bodies is flexible. Toremedy this situation, a sliding joint and a sliding screwjoint are proposed that involves kinematic constraints at theinstantaneous point of contact between the sliding bodies. For slidingscrew joints, additional constraints are added on the relative rotationof the contacting bodies. Various numerical examples are presented thatdemonstrate the dramatically different behavior of cylindrical,prismatic, or screw joints and of the proposed sliding and sliding screwjoints in the presence of elastic bodies, and the usefulness of theseconstraint elements in the modeling of complex mechanical systems.     

Improving the tracking performance of mechanical systems by adaptive extended friction compensation

The paper discusses a tracking control system and shows with simulation and experimental results that extended friction models can be successfully incorporated in a computed-torque-like adaptive control scheme. The friction model used includes Coulomb, viscous, and periodic friction with sense of direction dependent parameters. To get small tracking errors, adaptation of the friction model parameters is necessary. The tracking performance is an order of magnitude better than with PD control. The robustness of the scheme for parameter inaccuracies is sufficient, owing to the adaptation, but the controller gains are limited due to stability problems caused by unmodeled dynamics.     

Adaptive Control for Simultaneous Stabilization and Tracking of Unicycle Mobile Robots

A novel time‐varying adaptive controller at the torque level is proposed to simultaneously solve the stabilization and the tracking problem of unicycle mobile robots with unknown dynamic parameters. The idea underlying the controller is intuitively simple: rather than switching between two different types of controllers according to the a priori knowledge of the reference velocities being persistently exciting or not, a new time‐varying signal is introduced to make the single controller capable of adaptively, smoothly, and gradually converting between stabilizer and tracker depending on the instantaneous and past information of the reference velocities. Our control development is based on Lyapunov's direct method and the backstepping technique. Adaptive control techniques are used to deal with parametric uncertainties. The outstanding feature of our controller is computationally simple due to its full use of the existing results on stabilization and tracking control for unicycle robots. With our approach, robots can globally follow a large class of paths including a straight line, a circle, a path approaching a set‐point, or just a set‐point using a single controller. Simulation results for a unicycle‐type mobile robot are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

用多机器人系统完成柔性物体的跟踪控制

本文研究了用多机器人系统完成柔性物体的跟踪的控制问题,为了简化对这一十分复杂问题的表述,用一个柔性长杆代替了一般形状的柔性物体,在对象的一些力学性质被确立之后,提出了一个递阶控制策略。     

Abstractions of Hamiltonian control systems

Given a control system and a desired property, an abstracted system is a reduced system that preserves the property of interest while ignoring modeling detail. In previous work, abstractions of linear and nonlinear control systems were considered while preserving reachability properties. In this paper, we consider the abstraction problem for Hamiltonian control systems, where, in addition to the property of interest we also preserve the Hamiltonian structure of the control system. We show how the Hamiltonian structure of control systems can be exploited to simplify the abstraction process. We then focus on local accessibility preserving abstractions, and provide conditions under which local accessibility properties of the abstracted Hamiltonian system are equivalent to the local accessibility properties of the original Hamiltonian control system.     

Repetitive Learning Control Design and Period Uncertainties

The aim of this brief is to show how stability proofs in the time‐domain involving suitable quadratic‐integral Lyapunov‐like functions can be derived in the repetitive control design scenario in the case of uncertain period for the reference signals/disturbances to be tracked/rejected. Even though the presented arguments are rather general, we apply them to the generalization of the proportional–integral–derivative (PID)‐like learning control that has been recently designed. The use of the presented results in multi‐link robot synchronization tasks provides simple and intuitive solutions to as yet unsolved problems.     

A Flexible Control Architecture for Mobile Robots: An Application for a Walking Robot

To get the best features of both deliberative and reactive controllers, present mobile robot control architectures are designed to accommodate both types of controller. However, these architectures are still very rigidly structured thus deliberative modules are always assigned to the same role as a high-level planner or sequencer while low-level reactive modules are still the ones directly interacting with the robot environment. Furthermore, within these architectures communication and interface between modules are if not strongly established, they are very complex thus making them unsuitable for simple robotic systems. Our idea in this paper is to present a control architecture that is flexible in the sense that it can easily integrate both reactive and deliberative modules but not necessarily restricting the role of each type of controller. Communication between modules is through simple arbitration schemes while interface is by connecting a common communication line between modules and simple read and/or write access of data objects. On top of these features, the proposed control architecture is scalable and exhibits graceful degradation when some of the modules fail, similar to the present mobile robot architectures. Our idea has enabled our four-legged robot to walk autonomously in a structured uneven terrain.     

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.     

非完整移动机器人目标环绕动态反馈线性化控制

本文针对多个非完整移动机器人对静止或运动目标的环绕追踪问题进行研究.每个机器人仅通过自身和其相邻的机器人的位置与方向信息以及所追踪的目标的位置信息来协调其运动.首先,提出了一种基于动态反馈线性化方法的分布式控制策略,并引入一个控制机器人之间相对角间距的非线性函数,控制机器人间的相对角间距.使多个机器人能够以期望的与目标之间的相对距离、环绕速度和机器人之间的相对角间距对目标进行追踪.然后,利用Lyapunov工具对控制算法进行了渐近稳定性和收敛性分析.最后构建了多移动机器人实验平台,进行了数值仿真和实验验证,仿真和实验的运行结果表明了所提出算法的有效性.     

基于非线性系统相对度的学习控制算法及在非完整移动机器人中的应用

首先提出了一种基于非线性系统对度的迭代学习控制算法,并证明了其收敛性,该算法通过对系统以前的输入和输出跟踪误差信号进行学习来反复调整输入量,使得系统在经过一定次数的学习以后,其实际输出趋于期望输出且其内部状态也具有良好的收敛特性,其次将此算法应用于两轮驱动的移动机器人动力学系统,数值仿真结果表明了这种算法的有效性。     

Nonlinear control with acceleration feedback for a two-link flexible robot

In this paper, a three-loop control strategy is applied to each link of a two-link flexible robot. In the first loop feedback linearization is applied to the rigid and motor dynamics. The second loop consists of a simple proportional-derivative (PD) control law for accurate rigid body angle tracking. The third loop uses endpoint accelearation feedback to account for flexure effects. The overall scheme is relatively simple in order to facilitate easy implementation; experimental results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the developed schemes.     

非仿射非线性多智能体系统迭代学习一致跟踪

为了解决非仿射非线性多智能体系统在给定时间区间上一致性完全跟踪问题,基于迭代学习控制方法设计一种分布式一致性跟踪控制算法.首先,由引入的虚拟领导者与所有跟随者组成多智能体系统的通信拓扑,其中虚拟领导者的作用是提供期望轨迹.然后,在只有部分跟随者能够获得领导者信息的条件下,利用每个跟随者及其邻居的跟踪误差构造每个跟随者的迭代学习一致性跟踪控制器.同时采用中值定理将非仿射非线性多智能体系统转化仿射形式,并基于压缩映射方法证明所提算法的收敛性,给出算法的收敛条件.理论分析表明,在智能体的非线性函数未知情况下,利用所提算法可以使非仿射非线性多智能体系统在给定时间区间上随迭代次数增加逐次实现一致性完全跟踪.最后,通过仿真算例进一步验证所提算法的有效性.