Mathematical modeling and fuzzy control of a flexible-link robot arm

In this paper, the Timoshenko theory is applied to investigate a new mathematical model for the “shoulder-elbow-like” single flexible-link robot arm with dampings. Detailed analysis and derivation are given to support the mathematical modeling of this particular flexible mechanism. A new design of a fuzzy-logic-based (PI + D)² control scheme is developed for both vibration suppression and set-point tracking. Computer simulation results for the modeling are performed to observe the significant vibration modes, and simulation results for the control scheme demonstrate that the controllers perform very well for the tracking based on this flexible-link model. A newly developed method for stability analysis using the “two-straight-lines” criterion is also presented.     

Model-based and model-free control of flexible-link robots: A comparison between representative methods

The paper presents a comparative study on representative methods for model-based and model-free control of flexible-link robots. Model-based techniques for the control of flexible-link robots can come up against limitations when an accurate model is unavailable, due to parameters uncertainty or truncation of high order vibration modes. On the other hand, several research papers argue that suitable model-free control methods result in satisfactory performance of flexible-link robots. In this paper two model-free approaches of flexible-link robot control are examined: (i) energy-based control, and (ii) neural adaptive control. The performance of the aforementioned methods is compared to the inverse dynamics model-based control, in a simulation case study for planar 2-DOF manipulators.     

Comparative study on control concepts of a robot manipulator with multiple-link/joint flexibilities

If one is dealing with active vibration suppression on a highly nonlinear flexible system, various techniques are needed. On the one hand a suitable dynamic model of the system is required. And on the other hand intelligent model based control concepts are necessary for active vibration damping. We deal with a basic model, where the flexibilities are approximated with linear springs and dampers, a so called lumped element model (LEM). For the control design we propose a control structure with two degrees of freedom (2DoF) for solving the tracking problem, based on the LEM. Such an approach allows designing the feedforward part independently of the feedback part. Hereby the feedforward control is based on the flatness approach, while for the feedback control several strategies are studied using acceleration- and gyrosensor-measurements. The contribution is completed with a validation by measurements from a very fast trajectory on an articulated robot with two flexible links and three elastic joints. (© 2012 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Adaptive control of kinematically redundant robots

A redundant robot has more degrees of freedom than those neededto position the Robert end-effector uniquely. In a usual robotictask, only end-effector position trajectory is specified. Thejoint position trajectory is unknown, and it must be selectedfrom a self-motion manifold for a specified end-effector. Inmany situations, the robot dynamic parameters such as the linkmass, inertia, and joint viscous friction are unknown. The lackof knowledge of the joint trajectory and the dynamic parametersmake it difficult to control redundant robots. In this paper we show, through careful formulation of the problem,that the adaptative control of redundant robots can be addressedas a reference-velocity traking problem in the joint space.A control law ensures bounded estimation of the unknown dynamicparameters of the robot, and the convergence to zero of thevelocity traking error is derived. To ensure the joint motionon the self-motion manifold remains bounded, a homeomorphictransformation is found. This transformation decomposes thedynamics of the velocity tracking error into a cascade systemconsisting of the dynamics in the end-effector error coordinatesand the dynamics on the self-motion manifold. The dynamics onthe self-motion manifold is shown to be related to the conceptof zero dynamics. In the shown that, if the reference jointtrajectory is selected to optimize a certain type of objectivefunction, then stable dynamics on the self-motion manifold result.This ensures the overall stability of the adaptive system. Detailedsimulations are given to test the theoretical developments.The proposed adaptive scheme does not require measurements ofthe joint acceleration or the inversion of the inertia matrixof the robot.     

Outcome of special vibration controller techniques linked to a cracked beam

This paper presents a comparison between three different controller methods added to a cracked beam under the action of a harmonic excitation. Those three controllers are Positive Position Feedback (PPF), Integral Resonant Control (IRC) and Nonlinear Integral Positive Position Feedback (NIPPF) which be added to the measured system. The multiple scales method (MSM) is applied for getting the approximate solution on behalf of measured design. This method is effective to solve the major equations of measured system. Stability and effect of different coefficients of the system are demonstrated. The approximate solution response is established via numerical simulation outcome. NIPPF controller is the best one gives better results compared to the other two controllers in decreasing the high amplitude of the system. Comparison between mathematical solution and numerical simulation are considered. Relationship of formerly available papers is considered.     

Output feedback dynamic control for trajectory tracking and vibration suppression

A new output feedback dynamic tracking control scheme for multiple and variable excitation frequency vibration suppression in mechanical systems is proposed. Dynamic vibration absorbers, differential flatness, Taylor polynomials and dynamic error compensation are integrated into the control synthesis. In this fashion, significant control capabilities are added to physical or virtual dynamic vibration absorbers to simultaneously perform multiple-frequency forced vibration suppression and trajectory tracking on the primary mechanical system. Parametric uncertainty and unmodeled dynamics are also considered to be actively compensated. Real-time estimations of periodic or aperiodic dynamic perturbation forces, excitation frequencies, unavailable state variables and parametric uncertainty are not necessary. Thus, measurements of the output position variable of the controlled primary mechanical system are only required. Analytical and numerical results on three case studies prove the efficiency and robustness of the proposed control method.     

Neural network-based nonlinear tracking control of kinematically redundant robot manipulators

In this paper, neural network-based nonlinear dynamical control of kinematically redundant robot manipulators is considered. The neural network-based controller achieves end-effector trajectory tracking as well as subtask tracking effectively. A feedforward neural network is employed to learn the parametric uncertainties, existing in the dynamical model of the robot manipulator. The whole system is shown to be stable in the sense of Lyapunov. Numerical simulation studies are carried out for a 3R planar robot manipulator to show the effectiveness of the control scheme.     

An entire strategy for precise system tracking control of a revolving thin flexural link,part II: System output modification

Fast move times and settling times while minimizing the remaining vibrations must be provided by a high performance revolving flexural link. Recent academic work in this area focus on two close related problems. The first priority is concerned with the vibration control while the link is moving. The second problem is the post-slew ending position control. In an attempt to resolve these difficulties, this present paper is a continuation of [1], a regulating reference input technique combined with the aforementioned direct tuning design scheme in order to modify the system output that makes the corresponding closed-loop system of the revolving flexural link for optimal trajectory tracking performance is presented.     

柔性杆柔性铰机器人动力学分析

研究由N柔性杆和N柔性铰组成的空间机器人的动力学问题．把柔性铰简化成一个线性扭转弹簧,采用假设模态法表示杆件的弹性变形,运用Kane方法对全柔机器人进行动力学建模,推导出完整的系统动力学方程组．通过一个数值仿真算例,验证所做工作的可行性,并分析了柔性效应对机器人动力学响应的影响．     

基于Udwadia-Kalaba方法的并联机器人鲁棒伺服约束控制

针对2自由度冗余驱动并联机器人轨迹跟踪控制问题,提出了一种基于Udwadia-Kalaba方程的鲁棒伺服控制方法.在负载、外部干扰以及制造误差的影响下,无法得到机器人精确、完整的运动模型,导致机器人控制性能变差.为解决这类不确定性带来的影响,提出了一种鲁棒控制方法.该方法通过保证系统的一致有界性和一致最终有界性,使系统能够精确跟踪理想约束轨迹.此外,该方法采用Udwadia-Kalaba方程,求解控制过程中满足系统理想约束所需要的约束力.Udwadia-Kalaba方程不需要Lagrange乘子或伪广义速度等辅助变量,可以同时处理完整约束和非完整约束,且可以获得满足轨迹约束的约束力解析解.利用Lyapunov函数对该鲁棒控制方法的稳定性进行了理论证明,并且通过仿真实验,验证了该鲁棒控制方法能够在非理想条件下实现给定轨迹的高精度跟踪控制.     

Adaptive Robust Tracking for Flexible Spacecraft in Presence of Disturbances

The paper deals with trajectory tracking for a flexible spacecraft, subject to a gravity-gradient disturbance, under parameter uncertainties. The controls are gas jets and reaction wheels, and the measured variables describe the attitude and angular velocity of the rigid part. The flexible dynamics is treated as an additional disturbance acting on a rigid structure. First, an adaptive control is designed with only the gravity-gradient disturbance acting on the spacecraft; second, it is proved to be effective also in the presence of disturbance due to the flexibility, provided that appropriate robustness conditions on the controller gains are satisfied. These conditions use partial knowledge of the parameters describing the elastic dynamics. Simulations show the good performance of such control scheme and demonstrate its applicability even in the presence of input saturation.     

Suppression of chaotic behavior in horizontal platform systems based on an adaptive sliding mode control scheme

This work presents an adaptive sliding mode control scheme to elucidate the robust chaos suppression control of non-autonomous chaotic systems. The proposed control scheme utilizes extended systems to ensure that continuous control input is obtained in order to avoid chattering phenomenon as frequently in conventional sliding mode control systems. A switching surface is adopted to ensure the relative ease in stabilizing the extended error dynamics in the sliding mode. An adaptive sliding mode controller (ASMC) is then derived to guarantee the occurrence of the sliding motion, even when the chaotic horizontal platform system (HPS) is undergoing parametric uncertainties. Based on Lyapunov stability theorem, control laws are derived. In addition to guaranteeing that uncertain horizontal platform chaotic systems can be stabilized to a steady state, the proposed control scheme ensures asymptotically tracking of any desired trajectory. Furthermore, the numerical simulations verify the accuracy of the proposed control scheme, which is applicable to another chaotic system based on the same design scheme.     

Switched safe tracking control design for unmanned autonomous helicopter with disturbances

In this paper, the switched safe tracking control scheme is investigated for the attitude and altitude system of a medium-scale unmanned autonomous helicopter with output constraints and unknown external disturbances. To keep the attitude angles and altitude within the desired constrained range, an output boundary protection approach is adopted to generate an output constrained trajectory which is piecewise differentiable. The disturbance observer-based control method is employed to handle the unknown external disturbances of the system. Because of the piecewise differentiability of the output constrained trajectory, the closed-loop error system with the safe tracking controller can be seen as a switched system with jump dynamics. The multiple Lyapunov function method is adopted to guarantee the tracking performance with designed average dwell time. Simulation results of an example are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme for the unmanned autonomous helicopter system.     

Adaptive cooperative control of networked uncalibrated robotic systems with time‐varying communicating delays

This paper investigates the trajectory tracking control of the networked multimanipulator with the existence of time‐varying delays and uncertainties in both kinematics and dynamics. To address time‐varying delays in the communication links, a novel control scheme is established by the design of delay–rate‐dependent networking mutual coupling strengths. Besides, to handle the kinematic and dynamic uncertainties, an adaptive controller is designed. The proposed control scheme guarantees that the networked robotic system can track a commonly desired trajectory cooperatively with the strongly connected communication graph, uncertainties, and time‐varying communicating delays. A Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional is employed to rigorously prove the asymptotic convergence of both tracking errors and synchronization errors. The simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the control method proposed by this paper.     

Robustly stable pole-placement based adaptive control of continuous linear systems with multiestimation

This paper deals with the pole-placement type robust adaptive control of continuous linear systems in the presence of bounded noise and a common class of unmodeled dynamics with the use of multiple estimation schemes working in parallel. The multiestimation scheme consisting of the above set of various single estimation schemes is a tool used to minimize the plant identification error by building an estimate which is a convex combination of the estimates at all time. The weighting functions of the individual estimates are provided at each time by a suboptimization scheme for a quadratic loss function of a possibly filtered tracking error and/or control input. The robust stability of the overall adaptive scheme is ensured by an adaptation relative dead zone which takes into account the contribution of the unmodeled dynamics and bounded noise. The basic results are derived for two different estimation strategies which have either a shared regressor with the plant or individual regressors for the input contribution and its relevant time-derivatives. In this second case, the plant input is obtained through a similar convex combination rule as the one used for the estimators in the first approach. An extension of the basic strategies is also pointed out including a combined use of the suboptimization scheme with a supervisor of past measures for the on-line calculation of the estimator weights in the convex combination.     

Intelligent active force control of a 3-RRR parallel manipulator incorporating fuzzy resolved acceleration control

This paper introduces a novel intelligent control scheme for robust and precise positioning and orientation of a class of highly non-linear 3-RRR (revolute-revolute-revolute) planar parallel manipulator. The primary objective is to force the manipulator to track accurately a prescribed Cartesian trajectory when the system is subjected to different types of disturbances in the forms of forced harmonic excitations. A two level fuzzy tuning resolved acceleration control (FLRAC) is first designed and implemented to the system to demonstrate the stable response of the manipulator in performing trajectory tracking tasks in the absence of the disturbances. In this scheme, the first level of fuzzy tuning is used to acquire the proportional-derivative (PD) gains linearly while the second level considers non-linear tuning for determining the other parameters of the fuzzy controller to increase its performance. Then, the controller is added in series with an active force controller (AFC) to create a novel two degree-of-freedom (DOF) controller known as FLRAC-AFC which is subsequently and rigorously tested for system robustness and accuracy in tracking the prescribed trajectory. The simulation study provides further insight into the potentials of the proposed robotic system in rejecting the disturbances for the given operating conditions. The results clearly show that the FLRAC-AFC scheme provides a much superior trajectory tracking capability compared to the conventional linear RAC alone.     

Nonlinear Modeling and Tracking Control of a Hydraulic Rotary Vane Actuator

Rotary vane actuators as rotational drives provide rotational movements directly because they are constructed as a joint and actuator in one. So it is possible to pass on the disadvantageous transmission kinematics used with the so far usual differential cylinders at the arms of large manipulators. However, the use of hydraulic rotary vane actuators is associated with high internal oil leakage and/or high friction. Therefore, a nonlinear dynamic model for such an actuator, driving a rigid robot arm, as well as its nonlinear control are derived. To achieve tracking control a model based control law is set up using fundamental linear differential equations for the tracking error. The control law is implemented and tested on a testbed, the produced experimental results are presented. The same control algorithm can also be used to realize nonlinear disturbance attenuation for hydraulic rotary vane actuators via tracking control. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Closed-form recursive formula for an optimal tracker with terminal constraints

Feedback control laws are derived for a class of optimal finite time tracking problems with terminal constraints. Analytical solutions are obtained for the feedback gain and the closed-loop response trajectory. Such formulations are expressed in recursive forms so that a real-time computer implementation becomes feasible. An example involving the feedback slewing of a flexible spacecraft is given to illustrate the validity and usefulness of the formulations.     

Quantized-states-based adaptive control against unknown slippage effects of uncertain mobile robots with input and state quantization

An adaptive tracking design strategy based on quantized state feedback is developed for uncertain nonholonomic mobile robots with unknown wheel slippage effects. All state variables and control torques are assumed to be quantized by the state and input quantizers, respectively, in a network control environment. Thus, the quantized state feedback information is only available for the tracking control design. An approximation-based adaptive controller using quantized states is recursively designed to ensure the robust adaptive tracking against unknown wheel slippage effects where the quantized-states-based adaptive mechanism is derived to compensate for unknown wheel slippage effects, system nonlinearities, and quantization errors. The boundedness of the quantization errors and estimated parameters in the closed-loop system is analyzed by presenting some theoretical lemmas. Based on these lemmas, we prove the uniform ultimate boundedness of closed-loop signals and the convergence of the trajectory tracking error in the presence of wheel slippage effects. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the resulting tracking scheme.     

Based on interval type-2 fuzzy-neural network direct adaptive sliding mode control for SISO nonlinear systems

In this paper, a novel direct adaptive interval type-2 fuzzy-neural tracking control equipped with sliding mode and Lyapunov synthesis approach is proposed to handle the training data corrupted by noise or rule uncertainties for nonlinear SISO nonlinear systems involving external disturbances. By employing adaptive fuzzy-neural control theory, the update laws will be derived for approximating the uncertain nonlinear dynamical system. In the meantime, the sliding mode control method and the Lyapunov stability criterion are incorporated into the adaptive fuzzy-neural control scheme such that the derived controller is robust with respect to unmodeled dynamics, external disturbance and approximation errors. In comparison with conventional methods, the advocated approach not only guarantees closed-loop stability but also the output tracking error of the overall system will converge to zero asymptotically without prior knowledge on the upper bound of the lumped uncertainty. Furthermore, chattering effect of the control input will be substantially reduced by the proposed technique. To illustrate the performance of the proposed method, finally simulation example will be given.