A Sliding Mode Force and Position Controller Synthesis for Series Elastic Actuators

This paper deals with the robust force and position control problems of Series Elastic Actuators. It is shown that a Series Elastic Actuator's force control problem can be described by a second-order dynamic model which suffers from only matched disturbances. However, the position control dynamics of a Series Elastic Actuator is of fourth-order and includes matched and mismatched disturbances. In other words, a Series Elastic Actuator's position control is more complicated than its force control, particularly when disturbances are considered. A novel robust motion controller is proposed for Series Elastic Actuators by using Disturbance Observer and Sliding Mode Control. When the proposed robust motion controller is implemented, a Series Elastic Actuator can precisely track desired trajectories and safely contact with an unknown and dynamic environment. The proposed motion controller does not require precise dynamic models of the actuator and environment. Therefore, it can be applied to many different advanced robotic systems such as compliant humanoids and exoskeletons. The validity of the motion controller is experimentally verified.Comment: Accepted by Robotica in 201

A Novel Adaptive Sliding Mode Controller for a 2-DOF Elastic Robotic Arm

Collaborative robots (or cobots) are robots that are capable of safely operating in a shared environment or interacting with humans. In recent years, cobots have become increasingly common. Compliant actuators are critical in the design of cobots. In real applications, this type of actuation system may be able to reduce the amount of damage caused by an unanticipated collision. As a result, elastic joints are expected to outperform stiff joints in complex situations. In this work, the control of a 2-DOF robot arm with elastic actuators is addressed by proposing a two-loop adaptive controller. For the outer control loop, an adaptive sliding mode controller (ASMC) is adopted to deal with uncertainties and disturbance on the load side of the robot arm. For the inner loops, model reference adaptive controllers (MRAC) are utilised to handle the uncertainties on the motor side of the robot arm. To show the effectiveness of the proposed controller, extensive simulation experiments and a comparison with the conventional sliding mode controller (SMC) are carried out. As a result, the ASMC has a 50.35% lower average RMS error than the SMC controller, and a shorter settling time (5% criterion) (0.44 s compared to 2.11 s).publishedVersio

Theoretical and numerical experiences on a test rig for active vibration control of mechanical systems with moving constraints

Active control of vibrations in mechanical systems has recently benefited of the remarkable development of robust control techniques. These control techniques are able to guarantee performances in spite of unavoidable modeling errors. They have been successfully codified and implemented for vibrating structures whose uncertain parameters could be assumed to be time-invariant. Unfortunately a wide class of mechanical systems, such as machine tools with carriage motion realized by a ball-screw, are characterized by time varying modal parameters. The focus of this paper is on modeling and controlling the vibrations of such systems. A test rig for active vibration control is presented. An analytical model of the test rig is synthesized starting by design data. Through experimental modal analysis, parametric identification and updating procedures, the model has been refined and a control system has been synthesized

AMC'24 "A Novel Stiffness Modulation Mechanism for Energy Efficient Variable Stiffness Actuators"

This paper presents a new stiffness modulation mechanism that enables infinite-range stiffness modulation in a fast manner. The proposed stiffness modulation mechanism can help improve many robot environment interaction applications such as human-robot collaboration and robotic rehabilitation

Nonlinear cancellation of the parametric resonance in elastic beams: theory and experiment

A non-linear control strategy is applied to a simply supported uniform elastic beam subjected to an axial end force at the principal-parametric resonance frequency of the first skew-symmetric mode. The control input consists of the bending couples applied by two pairs of piezoceramic actuators attached onto both sides of the beam surfaces and symmetrically with respect to the midspan, driven by the same voltage, thus resulting into symmetric control forces. This control architecture has zero control authority, in a linear sense, onto skew-symmetric vibrations. The non-linear transfer of energy from symmetric motions to skew-symmetric modes, due to non-linear inertia and curvature effects, provides the key physical mechanism for channelling suitable control power from the actuators into the linearly uncontrollable mode. The reduced dynamics of the system, constructed with the method of multiple scales directly applied to the governing PDE’s and boundary conditions, suggest effective forms of the control law as a two-frequency input in sub-combination resonance with the parametrically driven mode. The performances of different control laws are investigated. The relative phase and frequency relationships are designed so as to render the control action the most effective. The control schemes generate non-linear controller forces which increase the threshold for the activation of the parametric resonance thus resulting into its annihilation. The theoretical predictions are compared with experimentally obtained results

Performance of modified jatropha oil in combination with hexagonal boron nitride particles as a bio-based lubricant for green machining

This study evaluates the machining performance of newly developed modified jatropha oils (MJO1, MJO3 and MJO5), both with and without hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) particles (ranging between 0.05 and 0.5 wt%) during turning of AISI 1045 using minimum quantity lubrication (MQL). The experimental results indicated that, viscosity improved with the increase in MJOs molar ratio and hBN concentration. Excellent tribological behaviours is found to correlated with a better machining performance were achieved by MJO5a with 0.05 wt%. The MJO5a sample showed the lowest values of cutting force, cutting temperature and surface roughness, with a prolonged tool life and less tool wear, qualifying itself to be a potential alternative to the synthetic ester, with regard to the environmental concern

Disturbance Observer-based Robust Control and Its Applications: 35th Anniversary Overview

Disturbance Observer has been one of the most widely used robust control tools since it was proposed in 1983. This paper introduces the origins of Disturbance Observer and presents a survey of the major results on Disturbance Observer-based robust control in the last thirty-five years. Furthermore, it explains the analysis and synthesis techniques of Disturbance Observer-based robust control for linear and nonlinear systems by using a unified framework. In the last section, this paper presents concluding remarks on Disturbance Observer-based robust control and its engineering applications.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure