Adaptive unified motion control of mobile manipulators

This paper presents a unified motion controller for mobile manipulators which not only solves the problems of point stabilization and trajectory tracking but also the path following problem. The control problem is solved based on the kinematic model of the robot. Then, a dynamic compensation is considered based on a dynamic model with inputs being the reference velocities to the mobile platform and the manipulator joints. An adaptive controller for on-line updating the robot dynamics is also proposed. Stability and robustness of the complete control system are proved through the Lyapunov method. The performance of the proposed controller is shown through real experiments.     

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.     

Adaptive control of multiple mobile manipulators transporting a rigid object

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - This paper presents a nonlinear control scheme for multiple mobile manipulator robots (MMR) moving a rigid object in coordination. The...     

Adaptive recurrent neural network control of uncertain constrained nonholonomic mobile manipulators

In this article, motion/force control problem of a class of constrained mobile manipulators with unknown dynamics is considered. The system is subject to both holonomic and nonholonomic constraints. An adaptive recurrent neural network controller is proposed to deal with the unmodelled system dynamics. The proposed control strategy guarantees that the system motion asymptotically converges to the desired manifold while the constraint force remains bounded. In addition, an adaptive method is proposed to identify the contact surface. Simulation studies are carried out to verify the validation of the proposed approach.     

Adaptive robust motion/force control of holonomic-constrained nonholonomic mobile manipulators.

In this paper, adaptive robust force/motion control strategies are presented for mobile manipulators under both holonomic and nonholonomic constraints in the presence of uncertainties and disturbances. The proposed control is robust not only to parameter uncertainties such as mass variations but also to external ones such as disturbances. The stability of the closed-loop system and the boundedness of tracking errors are proved using Lyapunov stability synthesis. The proposed control strategies guarantee that the system motion converges to the desired manifold with prescribed performance and the bounded constraint force. Simulation results validate that the motion of the system converges to the desired trajectory, and the constraint force converges to the desired force.     

Adaptive robust coordinated control of multiple mobile manipulators interacting with rigid environments

In this paper, we consider multiple mobile manipulators grasping a common object in contact with a rigid surface, and propose a new version of adaptive robust control extended to the actuator level for multiple mobile manipulators carrying a common object in a cooperative manner. The proposed controls are robust not only to parametric uncertainties including mass variation and electrical parameters but also to external disturbances. Simulation results are presented to validate that the motion/force tracking errors converge to zero whereas the internal force tracking error remains bounded and can be made arbitrarily small.     

Robust control of mobile manipulators

A mobile manipulator is basically a manipulator mounted on a mobile vehicle. This arrangement has some advantages over stationary robots and mobile robots, such as the infinite workspace and the ability to avoid singularities. However, the control problem becomes a sophisticated one. This is due to the nonlinear and nonholonomic constraints governing the motion of the vehicle. Moreover, the dynamics of the manipulator and the vehicle are highly coupled; ground-surface irregularities, for example, affect the motion of the end effector kinematically and dynamically. A mobile manipulator is expected to pass through different environmental conditions, a fact which calls for a robust control scheme. Unfortunately, the robust control problem for nonholonomic systems is not well defined yet. Since the ultimate goal of control is to control the motion of the manipulator's end effector, it is proposed in this article to tackle the robustness issue by designing a manipulator decoupling controller. This controller aims at rejecting disturbances arising from the motion of the vehicle. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Neural-network control of mobile manipulators

In this paper, a neural network (NN)-based methodology is developed for the motion control of mobile manipulators subject to kinematic constraints. The dynamics of the mobile manipulator is assumed to be completely unknown, and is identified online by the NN estimators. No preliminary learning stage of NN weights is required. The controller is capable of disturbance-rejection in the presence of unmodeled bounded disturbances. The tracking stability of the closed-loop system, the convergence of the NN weight-updating process and boundedness of NN weight estimation errors are all guaranteed. Experimental tests on a 4-DOF manipulator arm illustrate that the proposed controller significantly improves the performance in comparison with conventional robust control.     

Robust damping control of mobile manipulators

A novel robust control technique, robust damping control (RDC), is introduced. An RDC controller is further developed for the motion control of a mobile manipulator subject to kinematic constraints. The knowledge of dynamic parameters of the mobile manipulator is assumed to be completely unknown. The proposed RDC controller is capable of disturbance-rejection in the presence of unknown bounded disturbance, without requiring the knowledge of its bound. The stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed. The controller has a simple structure and can be easily implemented in applications. Experimental tests on a 2-DOF robotic manipulator illustrate that the proposed control is significantly better than conventional robust control.     

柔性臂协调运动系统的动态反馈镇定

研究柔性臂协调运动系统分布参数模型的镇定问题.基于系统能量关系和正实引理,提出一种构造性的设计方法.所设计的控制器由前馈和动态反馈两部分构成,其中动态反馈部分的传递函数是严格正实的.通过线性算子半群理论和LaSalle不变集原理,证明了闭环系统是渐近稳定的.     

Motion planning for cooperating mobile manipulators

We address the problem of motion planning for nonholonomic cooperating mobile robots manipulating and transporting objects while holding them in a stable grasp. We present a general approach for solving optimal control problems based on the calculus of variations. We specialize this approach to solving the motion planning problem and obtaining trajectories and actuator forces/torques for any maneuver in the presence of obstacles. The approach allows geometric constraints such as joint limits, kinematic constraints such as nonholonomic velocity constraints, and dynamic constraints such as frictional constraints and contact force constraints to be incorporated into the planning scheme. The application of this method is illustrated by computing motion plans for several examples, and these motions plans are implemented on an experimental testbed. ©1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

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.     

Adaptive exponential stabilization of mobile robots with unknown constant‐input disturbance

This paper concentrates on the discussions on stabilization of mobile robots with unknown constant‐input disturbance. Continuous time‐varying adaptive controllers are designed for mobile robots in a chain‐form by using Lyapunov approach. With the property of homogeneous systems, uncertain mobile robots governed by the proposed control algorithms become homogeneous of order 0 to achieve exponential stability. Simulation results validate the theoretical analysis. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Whole-body impedance control of wheeled mobile manipulators

Humanoid service robots in domestic environments have to interact with humans and their surroundings in a safe and reliable way. One way to manage that is to equip the robotic systems with force-torque sensors to realize a physically compliant whole-body behavior via impedance control. To provide mobility, such robots often have wheeled platforms. The main advantage is that no balancing effort has to be made compared to legged humanoids. However, the nonholonomy of most wheeled systems prohibits the direct implementation of impedance control due to kinematic rolling constraints that must be taken into account in modeling and control. In this paper we design a whole-body impedance controller for such a robot, which employs an admittance interface to the kinematically controlled mobile platform. The upper body impedance control law, the platform admittance interface, and the compensation of dynamic couplings between both subsystems yield a passive closed loop. The convergence of the state to an invariant set is shown. To prove asymptotic stability in the case of redundancy, priority-based approaches can be employed. In principle, the presented approach is the extension of the well-known and established impedance controller to mobile robots. Experimental validations are performed on the humanoid robot Rollin’ Justin. The method is suitable for compliant manipulation tasks with low-dimensional planning in the task space.     

非完整移动机械臂的鲁棒跟踪控制

针对非完整移动机械臂惯性参数的不确定性,采用滑模控制为其设计了输出跟踪控制器。首先给出了包括驱动电机动态特性的非完整移动机械臂的简化动态模型,然后通过微分同胚和输入变换将其分解为4个低阶子系统,并给出了其输出跟踪的滑模控制器设计方法。仿真实验表明,所设计的鲁棒控制器能很好地跟踪给定轨迹。     

Adaptive compliant force–motion control of coordinated non-holonomic mobile manipulators interacting with unknown non-rigid environments

Most studies on the coordination control of multiple mobile manipulators system assume exact knowledge of system dynamics and deal only with motion control. However, actual applications may involve the tasks in which multiple coordinated mobile manipulators system interacts with rigid or non-rigid working surfaces. In this paper, we consider multiple mobile manipulators grasping a rigid object in contact with a deformable working surface, whose geometric and real physical parameters are unknown but boundedness of physical parameters is known. The contact forces are nonlinear and difficult to model. A neuro-adaptive control for coordinated mobile manipulators is proposed for robust force/motion tracking. The control law is based on the philosophy of the parallel approach, in which the control problem is divided into three subspaces and the adaptive techniques are employed to deal with the uncertain environmental constraints, disturbances, and unknown robotic and object dynamics. The proposed adaptive force–motion controller guarantees the tracking errors of motion and force trajectories converge to zero. Simulation examples are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control.     

Adaptive robust control for servo manipulators

In this paper, an adaptive robust control scheme is developed which is suitable for the control of a class of uncertain nonlinear systems, typical of many servo manipulators. The control scheme is comprised of a model reference adaptive controller (MRAC) augmented with a nonlinear compensator based on an adaptive radial basis function (RBF). The RBF compensator is used to neutralise the effects of uncertain and possibly nonlinear dynamics, so that the equivalent system as seen by the MRAC is reduced to one without significant unstructured modelling errors. A stability analysis is provided to show the uniform stability and the asymptotic tracking capabilities of the proposed control system. Real-time experiment results verify the effectiveness of the control scheme.     

Dynamically consistent Jacobian inverse for mobile manipulators

By analogy to the definition of the dynamically consistent Jacobian inverse for robotic manipulators, we have designed a dynamically consistent Jacobian inverse for mobile manipulators built of a non-holonomic mobile platform and a holonomic on-board manipulator. The endogenous configuration space approach has been exploited as a source of conceptual guidelines. The new inverse guarantees a decoupling of the motion in the operational space from the forces exerted in the endogenous configuration space and annihilated by the dual Jacobian inverse. A performance study of the new Jacobian inverse as a tool for motion planning is presented.     

Adaptive linear controller for robotic manipulators

This paper presents a new approach to the position and velocity control of a manipulator by using an adaptive controller of the self-tuning type for each joint. The complicated manipulator system is modeled by a set of time series difference equations. The parameters of the models are determined by on-line recursive algorithms, which result from minimizing the sum of the squared equation errors. The adaptive controller of each joint is designed on the basis of the difference equation model and a chosen performance criterion. The controller gains are calculated on-line using the model with the estimated values of system parameters. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the approach. Some aspects of the implementation are also discussed.