Adaptive robust control and admittance control for contact-driven robotic surface conditioning

This work presents a hybrid position/force control of robots for surface contact conditioning tasks such as polishing, profiling, deburring, etc. The robot force control is designed using sliding mode ideas to benefit from robustness. On the one hand, a set of equality constraints are defined to attain the desired tool pressure on the surface, as well as to keep the tool orientation perpendicular to the surface. On the other hand, inequality constraints are defined to adapt the tool position to unmodeled features present in the surface, e.g., a protruding window frame. Conventional and non-conventional sliding mode controls are used to fulfill the equality and inequality constraints, respectively. Furthermore, in order to deal with sudden changes of the material stiffness, which are forwarded to the robot tool and can produce instability and bad performance, adaptive switching gain laws are considered not only for the conventional sliding mode control but also for the non-conventional sliding mode control. A lower priority tracking controller is also defined to follow the desired reference trajectory on the target surface. Moreover, the classical admittance control typically used in force control tasks is adapted for the proposed surface contact application in order to experimentally compare the performance of both control approaches. The effectiveness of the proposed method is substantiated by experimental results using a redundant 7R manipulator, whereas its advantages over the classical admittance control approach are experimentally shown.     

Compliant motion using a mobile manipulator: an operational space formulation approach to aircraft canopy polishing

The operational space formulation provides a framework for the analysis and control of robotic systems with respect to interactions with their environments. In this paper, we discuss its implementation on a mobile manipulator programmed to polish an aircraft canopy with a curved surface of unknown geometry. The polishing task requires the robot to apply a specified normal force on the canopy surface while simultaneously performing a compliant motion keeping the surface of the grinding tool tangentially in contact with the workpiece. A human operator controls the mobile base via a joystick to guide the polishing tool to desired areas on the canopy surface, effectively increasing the mobile manipulator's reachable workspace. The results demonstrate the efficacy of compliant motion and force regulation based on the operational space formulation for robots performing tasks in unknown environments with robustness towards base motion disturbances. The mobile manipulator consists of a PUMA 560 arm mounted on top of a Nomad XR4000 mobile base. Implementation issues are discussed and experimental results are shown.     

AL-ProMP: Force-relevant skills learning and generalization method for robotic polishing

Skill learning in robot polishing is gaining attention and becoming a hot issue. Current studies on skill learning in robot polishing are mainly about trajectory skills, and force-relevant skills learning models are less studied. A skill learning method with good generalization and robustness is one of the elements worth investigating. In this study, a force-relevant skills learning method called arc-length probabilistic movement primitives (AL-ProMP) is proposed to improve the efficiency of robot polishing force planning. AL-ProMP learns the mapping between the contact force and polishing trajectory, and the temporal scaling factor and force scaling factor in AL-ProMP enable better robustness of force planning in speed scaling tasks and polishing tasks in different scenarios. Speed scaling is an important property for adaptation of the polishing policy. For the generalization of polishing skills to different polishing tools in robotics disc polishing tasks of unknown geometric model workpieces, a novel force scaling factor for different polishing discs is proposed according to the contact force model. In addition, polishing contact position learning provides the basis for polishing trajectory generalization. Finally, it is experimentally verified that the proposed method is effective in learning and generalizing the demonstrated skills and improving the polishing surface quality of the workpiece with unknown geometric model.     

Development of an automatic mold polishing system

In this study, an automatic mold polishing system (AMPS) has been successfully developed. The AMPS integrates with mold geometry process kernel, path planner, process planner, and force control robot into a system. The polishing path is generated and drawn on the three-dimensional mold surface for verification. The AMPS can also automatic process the task planning according to the polishing requirements of the mold. The task list includes all the procedures and optimal polishing parameters. The polishing tasks were then executed by a force controllable robot. The experiment shows that the resultant of surface roughness satisfies the expectation in the process planning. Note to Practitioners -In the manufacturing of molds, the most time-consuming process is on the final stage the polishing process. The polishing processes in the mold industry are almost conducted manually. The worker needs exceptional skill that can only be trained by experienced master. For mass production of molds, automatic polishing of the mold is a necessary. From the long-term research effort, we have constructed an automatic mold polishing system (AMPS). The AMPS includes a dedicated 5-axes robot to execute the polishing task; a force control mechanism to hold the tool and apply constant pressure on the mold surface; and a software system that can read the geometry of the mold surface and automatically generate the detail polishing process and the polishing path for the robot. The AMPS now can handle polishing process for planar surfaces with obstacle inside and surfaces of revolution. Research effort is now concentrated on dealing with the free-from surfaces. Besides, reading the Initial Graphics Exchange System (IGES) format from various computer-aided design systems is another important issue for the system to be more useful. In all, the AMPS is just begin to accumulate any further researches and developments that may sustain various requirements of polishing applications.     

Precise and smooth contact force control for a hybrid mobile robot used in polishing

Contact force is dominant in robotic polishing since it directly determines the material removal. However, due to the position and stiffness disturbance of mobile robotic polishing and the nonlinear contact process between the robot and workpiece, how to realize precise and smooth contact force control of the hybrid mobile polishing robot remains challenging. To solve this problem, the force tracking error is investigated, which indicates that the force overshoot mainly comes from the input step signal and the environmental disturbance causes force tracking error in stable state. Accordingly, an integrated contact force control method is proposed, which combines feedforward of the desired force and adaptive variable impedance control. The nonlinear tracking differentiator is used to smooth the input step signal of the desired force for force overshoot reduction. Through modeling of the force tracking error, the adaptive law of the damping parameter is established to compensate disturbance. After theoretical analysis and simulation verification, the polishing experiment is carried out. The improvement in force control accuracy and roughness of the polished surface proves the effectiveness of the proposed method. Sequentially, the proposed method is employed in the polishing of a 76-meter wind turbine blade. The measurement result indicates that the surface roughness after mobile robotic polishing is better than Ra1.6. The study provides a feasible approach to improve the polishing performance of the hybrid mobile polishing robot.     

A shape adaptive motion control system with application to robotic polishing

This paper presents a new shape adaptive motion control system that integrates part measurement with motion control. The proposed system consists of four blocks: surface measurement; surface reconstruction; tool trajectory planning; and axis motion control. The key technology used in surface measurement and surface reconstruction is the spatial spectral analysis. In the surface measurement block, a new spectral spectrum comparison method is proposed to determine an optimal digitizing frequency. In the surface reconstruction block, different interpolation methods are compared in the spatial spectral domain. A spatial spectral B-spline method is presented. In the tool trajectory planning block, a method is developed to select a motion profile first and then determine tool locations according to the reconstructed surface in order to improve the accuracy of the planned toolpath. Based on the proposed methods, a software package is developed and implemented on the polishing robot constructed at Ryerson University. The effectiveness of the proposed system has been demonstrated by the experiment on edge polishing. In this experiment, the shape of the part edges is measured first, and then constructed as a wire-frame CAD model, based on which the tool trajectory is planned to control the tool to polish the edges.     

Research of Pneumatic Polishing Force Control System Based on High Speed On/off with PWM Controlling

In the polishing process, contact force has obvious influence on material removal rate, thus realizing stability and effectiveness of force control is a significant issue for automatic polishing. This paper designs a pneumatic polishing force control system to achieve reliability force control. The system is based on a high speed on/off valve which is controlled by Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) signals. PWM signals are generated by a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). Proportion-Integration-Differentiation (PID) control algorithm with moving average filter is conducted in the PLC, thus dynamic property of the system has been improved. The pneumatic system is assembled on a 3-TPS hybrid robot with 5 degrees of freedom (DOF) movement to equip a polishing experimental platform. Polishing force control experiments are conducted on the experimental platform to research the performances and characteristics of the pneumatic polishing force system. According to the experimental results, the pneumatic system presents excellent effectiveness and response speed to track a certain desired polishing force value with small force tracking error. Percentage of absolute average errors are descending as the desired force values is increasing, and settling time is small enough for the polishing manufacture. Therefore, based on the high speed on/off valve, the pneumatic polishing force system proposed in this paper can be conducted in various polishing processes and satisfy special requirements of different workpieces. The polishing force control system can be adjusted to work at an adaptive status due to the excellent effectiveness, stabilization and response speed of force tracking.     

Advanced teleoperation and control system for industrial robots based on augmented virtuality and haptic feedback

There are some industrial tasks that are still mainly performed manually by human workers due to their complexity, which is the case of surface treatment operations (such as sanding, deburring, finishing, grinding, polishing, etc.) used to repair defects. This work develops an advanced teleoperation and control system for industrial robots in order to assist the human operator to perform the mentioned tasks. On the one hand, the controlled robotic system provides strength and accuracy, holding the tool, keeping the right tool orientation and guaranteeing a smooth approach to the workpiece. On the other hand, the advanced teleoperation provides security and comfort to the user when performing the task. In particular, the proposed teleoperation uses augmented virtuality (i.e., a virtual world that includes non-modeled real-world data) and haptic feedback to provide the user an immersive virtual experience when remotely teleoperating the tool of the robot system to treat arbitrary regions of the workpiece surface. The method is illustrated with a car body surface treatment operation, although it can be easily extended to other surface treatment applications or even to other industrial tasks where the human operator may benefit from robotic assistance. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown with several experiments using a 6R robotic arm. Moreover, a comparison of the performance obtained manually by an expert and that obtained with the proposed method has also been conducted in order to show the suitability of the proposed approach.     

Remote control of space robots

A method for the remote control of a space robot is proposed for the case of large delays in the transmission of control signals from the Earth to the local robot control system and in feedback signals. The method involves the use of the model of the space robot and its current environment with the simulation of gravity conditions at the ground control center. In this model environment, the operator should carry out the required actions by controlling the space robot model in the master-slave mode using an arm with six degrees of freedom capable of reflecting the interaction force of a model robot working tool with models of the objects of the environment. The arm movement trajectory and the law of time variation of the reflected interaction force vector are program-based for the local space robot control system and should be executed by it upon reception from the ground control center. The robot’s possible erroneous actions generated by the inevitable inaccuracy of the environment model are compensated by the proposed method of programmed trajectory correction. In accordance with it, in order to generate correction signals, additional information received from different sensors is used. These sensors can be installed on both the model and space robot itself. This information includes data on the mutual position of a robot’s working tool and models of the objects of the environment, as well as on the interaction forces between them. The paper presents a detailed theoretical justification of the proposed approach and experimental results that confirm the theoretical conclusions.     

Adaptive control of free-floating space robots in Cartesian coordinates

An adaptive control scheme is proposed for the end-effector trajectory tracking control of free-floating space robots. In order to cope with the nonlinear parameterization problem of the dynamic model of the free-floating space robot system, the system is modeled as an extended robot which is composed of a pseudo-arm representing the base motions and a real robot arm. An on-line estimation of the unknown parameters along with a computed-torque controller is used to track the desired trajectory. The proposed control scheme does not require measurement of the accelerations of the base and the real robot arm. A two-link planar space robot system is simulated to illustrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.     

Intelligent desktop NC machine tool with compliant motion capability

In this paper, a new desktop NC machine tool with compliance control capability is presented for finishing metallic molds with small curved surface. The NC machine tool consists of three single-axis robots. Tools attached to the tip of the z-axis are ball-end abrasive tools. The control system of the NC machine tool is composed of a force feedback loop, position feedback loop and position feed-forward loop. The force feedback loop controls the polishing force consisting of tool contact force and kinetic friction force. The position feedback loop controls the position in pick feed direction. Further, the position feed-forward loop leads the tool tip along cutter location data. In order to first confirm the application limit of a conventional industrial robot to a finishing task, we evaluate the backlash that causes the position inaccuracy at the tip of an abrasive tool, through a simple position/force measurement. Through a similar measurement and a surface following control experiment along a lens mold, the basic position/force controllability with high resolutions is demonstrated. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

Calculation of the robot trajectory for the optimum directional orientation of fibre placement in the manufacture of composite profile frames

This article deals with theissue of calculating the trajectory of the end-effector of an industrial robot in the manufacture of composites. In the introduction to the article we describe the basic approaches used in the manufacture of composites. Robots are used to define the winding orientation of carbon fibre strands on an uneven polyurethane 3D core. The core is attached to the robot-end-effector and is led through a fibre-processing head according to a suitably defined robot trajectory during dry carbon fibre winding on the core. The model of a passage of the polyurethane core through a fibre-processing head is described in the article. The placement of the fibre-processing head is defined in the basic Euclidean coordinate system E₃ of the robot. The core is specified in the local coordinates of the Euclidean coordinate system E_3, the origin of this local system is in the robot-end-effector. The positioning of the local system in the basic system of the robot is entered using the “tool centre point” of the robot. A matrix calculus is used when calculating the trajectory robot-end-effector to determine the desired passage of the core through the fibre-processing head. Gradually, the required rotation and translation matrices of the local coordinate system of the robot-end-effector relative to the basic system are calculated and subsequently the Euler angles of rotation are determined corresponding to the transformation matrices. This is used to determine the sequence of values of the “tool centre point” for defining the desired trajectory of the robot-end-effector. The calculation for the trajectory was programmed in the Delphi development environment. The article also solves practical tasks of the polyurethane core passage through the fibre-processing head. The calculations of the trajectory of the robot-end-effector were used as input values for the graphic software simulator and at the same time winding of carbon strands on the polyurethane core was verified for the calculated trajectory of the robot-end-effector in the experimental laboratory.     

On tracking control of flexible robot arms

A controller for solving the tracking problem of flexible robot arms is presented. In order to achieve this goal, the desired trajectory for the link (flexible) coordinates is computed from the dynamic model of the robot arm and is guaranteed to be bounded, and the desired trajectory for the joint (rigid) coordinates can be assigned arbitrarily. The case of no internal damping is also considered, and a robust control technique is used to enhance the damping of the system     

Experiments in contact control

This article describes the implementation, experimentation, and application of contact control schemes for a 7-DOF Robotics Research arm. The contact forces and torques are measured in the sensor frame by the 6-axis force/torque sensor mounted at the wrist, are compensated for gravity, and then are transformed to the tool frame in which the contact task is defined and executed. The contact control schemes are implemented on the existing robot Cartesian position control system at 400Hz, do not require force rate information, and are extremely simple and computationally fast. Three types of contact control schemes are presented: compliance control, force control, and dual-mode control. In the compliance control scheme, the contact force is fed back through a lag-plus-feedforward compliance controller so that the end-effector behaves like a spring with adjustable stiffness; thus the contact force can be controlled by the reference position command. In the force control scheme, a force setpoint is used as the command input and a proportional-plus-integral force controller is employed to ensure that the contact force tracks the force setpoint accurately. In the dual-mode control scheme, the end-effector approaches and impacts the reaction surface in compliance mode, and the control scheme is then switched automatically to force mode after the initial contact has been established. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate contact with hard and soft surfaces under the three proposed control schemes. The article is concluded with the application of the proposed schemes to perform a contact-based eddy-current inspection task. In this task, the robot first approaches the inspection surface in compliance control until it feels that it has touched the surface, and then automatically levels the end-effector on the surface. The robot control system then transitions to force control and applies the desired force on the surface while executing a scanning motion. At the completion of the inspection task, the robot first relaxes the applied force and then retracts from the surface. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

基于变刚度自适应导纳机制的机械臂恒力控制

工业机械臂在诸如打磨抛光等接触式作业任务中对环境刚度信息存在一定的依赖性, 未知环境刚度信息将严重影响机器人的力位控制精度, 使得作业效果难以得到保证. 为解决环境信息不足或未知情况下的力/位置精确控制问题, 本文首先提出了一种新的自适应环境刚度在线估计方法, 针对时变的环境刚度进行实时估计, 由此预测生成后继的机械臂参考轨迹点, 随后提出了一种根据力跟踪误差实时调整末端工具手刚度系数的变刚度导纳恒力控制方法, 并结合李雅普诺夫稳定性理论给出了整体控制律的收敛性证明. 针对刚柔两种末端工具手和多种不同的曲面工件开展了实验研究, 并与传统PID控制方法和传统导纳控制方法进行了对比, 其结果表明本文所提出的复合控制方法可在不同工况条件下实现机器人运动过程中接触力的快速柔顺调节, 并获得4.55%以内的最优力控误差效果, 证明了本文所提出方法的有效性与可行性.     

Automation of surface finishing processes

The development of robots capable of interacting dynamically with the environment has proven to be a difficult task. Since a majority of manufacturing tasks require interaction of robots with their environment, this has become an important focus for research in the industry. Solutions both to specific manufacturing operations and to the theoretical body of knowledge within the industry are extremely important. The interaction of the robot with its environment is investigated in this paper for the configuration of a quick actuator and sensor attached to the robot tool. This configuration has been tested in an industrial application for Steinway & Sons, the world renowned piano manufacturer, specifically for the automation of the labor-intensive rubbing and finishing operations. The robot architecture utilizes a combination of macro-micro manipulator to improve its response time. A quick actuator added to the end of the robot arm is the micromanipulator, and the robot arm is the macromanipulator. Force and impedance control laws are executed concurrently by two separate controllers to control the quick actuator and the robot arm respectively. The experimental system proves the ability of this configuration to follow the complex contour of a grand piano rim and to exert a given force while rubbing its surface.     

Humanoid robot trajectory generator for safe haptic arm control via arm wrench limitation,trajectory compensation and reactive stepping

An optimal trajectory planner for humanoid robots with a haptically controlled arm is proposed. This trajectory planner simultaneously plans time-varying arm wrench constraints, foot step positions, and a Center-of-Mass (COM) trajectory. This system has the useful characteristic of ensuring that the robot does not fall when the human operator commands an excessively large arm wrench and in the long term the resultant arm wrench approaches the desired arm wrench via a combination of changes in the foot positions and the COM position. This is accomplished via a Model Predictive Controller with a Quadratic Programming-based trajectory optimizer that calculates a time series of arm wrench constraints, foot positions and, a COM trajectory that optimizes the criteria of minimizing the tracking error of the desired foot positions and the desired arm wrench. A simulation and experiments demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.     

Automated polishing of an unknown three-dimensional surface

An automatic system for polishing an unknown three-dimensional surface using a passively compliant end-effector mounted on the wrist of an industrial robot is described. As polishing proceeds, the end-effector uses position sensors to measure the misalignment of the robot's wrist from the local surface normal. A personal computer is used to acquire sensory data, to compute the desired configuration of the robot wrist, and to control the robot in a point-to-point mode. Low bandwidth point-to-point control is possible because of the passive compliant movement of the end-effector. Contact with the work surface can be maintained within an angular range of ±8° and a ±10 mm range of normal translational movement. Experimental performance tests show that the polishing system can function well under a variety of working conditions.     

Impedance model force control using a neural network-based effective stiffness estimator for a desktop NC machine tool

In manufacturing industries of metallic molds, various NC machine tools are used. A desktop NC machine tool with compliance control capability has been already proposed to automatically cope with the finishing process of an LED lens mold. The NC machine tool can control the polishing force acting between an abrasive tool and a workpiece, where the force control method developed is an impedance model force control. The most important gain, which gives a large influence to the stability, is the desired damping of the impedance model. Ideally, the desired damping is calculated from the critical damping condition of the force control system in consideration of the effective stiffness. The effective stiffness means the total stiffness including the characteristics composed of the NC machine tool itself, force sensor, tool attachment, abrasive tool, workpiece, zig and floor. One of the serious problems is that the effective stiffness of the NC machine tool has undesirable nonlinearity, so that it may destroy the stability of the force control system. In this paper, a systematic tuning method of the desired damping in the control system is considered by using neural networks, where the neural networks acquire the nonlinearity of effective stiffness. It is confirmed that the impedance model force controller with the neural network-based (NN-based) stiffness estimator allows the NC machine tool to achieve a high quality finished surface of an LED lens mold with a diameter of 3.6 mm.     

任意初态下的工业机器人迭代学习控制

对迭代初值为任意值的工业机器人轨迹跟踪控制系统,提出了一种基于滑模面的非线性迭代学习控制算法,使机器人轨迹能快速、精确跟踪上期望轨迹。基于有限时间收敛原理,构建了关于机器人轨迹跟踪误差的迭代滑模面,在滑模面内,机器人轨迹跟踪误差在预定时间内收敛到零。设计了基于滑模面的迭代学习控制算法,理论证明了随着迭代次数的增加,处于任意初态的轨迹将一致收敛到滑模面内,解决了迭代学习中的任意初值问题。数值仿真验证了该算法的有效性和抗干扰能力。