Momentum Control of Humanoid Robots with Series Elastic Actuators

Humanoid robots may require a degree of compliance at the joint level for improving efficiency, shock tolerance, and safe interaction with humans. The presence of joint elasticity, however, complexifies the design of balancing and walking controllers. This paper proposes a control framework for extending momentum based controllers developed for stiff actuators to the case of series elastic actuators. The key point is to consider the motor velocities as an intermediate control input, and then apply high-gain control to stabilise the desired motor velocities achieving momentum control. Simulations carried out on a model of the robot iCub verify the soundness of the proposed approach

Computed Torque Control for a VSA type Hybrid Shoulder Joint

Robotic anthropomorphism has been the study area of many researchers, which led to the conclusion that perceiving similar human features allow robots to be more socially accepted and integrated. Anthropomorphism can be thought from both morphological and functional point of views, while the degree of integration of both aspects determines the social impact of their union. One key aspect to the embodiment of functional anthropomorphism in robots is the impedance modulation. In this work, we present the first prototype of a variable stiffness actuated, hybrid type, robotic shoulder joint. We leverage our work on the anthropomorphic approach presented in our previous works for humanoids and humans applications. We then formulate the computed torque control scheme for such systems, controlled in fully autonomous scenarios

Increasing energy efficiency of high-speed parallel robots by using variable stiffness springs and optimal motion generation

International audienceThe classical approach to decrease the energy consumption of high-speed robots is by lowering the moving elements mass in order to have a lightweight structure. Even if this allows reducing the energy consumed, the lightweight architecture affects the robot stiffness, worsening the accuracy of the mechanism. Recently, variable stiffness actuators (VSAs) have been used in order to reduce the energy consumption of high-speed pick-and-place robots. The idea is to smartly tune online the stiffness of VSA springs so that the robot is put in near a resonance mode, thus considerably decreasing the energy consumption during fast pseudo-periodic pick-and-place motions. However, the serial configuration of springs and motors in the VSA leads to uncontrolled robot deflections at high-speeds and, thus, to a poor positioning accuracy of its end-effector. In order to avoid these drawbacks and to increase the energy efficiency while ensuring the accuracy, this paper proposes the use of parallel arrangement of variable stiffness springs (VSS) and motors, combined with an energy-based optimal trajectory planner. The VSS are used as energy storage for carrying out the reduction of the energy consumption and their parallel configuration with the motors ensure the load balancing at high-speed without losing the accuracy of the robot. Simulations of the suggested approach on a five-bar mechanism are performed and show the increase on energy efficiency. 1 INTRODUCTION It is well-known that in industrial applications, such as high-speed pick-and-place operations, parallel robots are widely used [1, 2]. Repeatability and accuracy are typically the most important criteria to measure their performance. Nevertheless, the design trends to operate at high speeds are shifting to the design of robots with lightweight architectures [3] in order to decrease the energy consumed by the motors, and measure as well the robot performance based on its energy efficiency [4]. For slow motions, gravity-balancing techniques [5-8] have been proposed in order to compensate the input efforts required to move the links of a pick-and-place robot, and thus to avoid consuming energy. Even if these methods have shown their effectiveness at slow speeds, it is not the case for high-speed operations in which the inertial effects are preponderant. A first solution introduced the series elastic actuators (SEAs) [9] to cope with the energy storage issues. The SEAs are compliant actua-tors composed by a motor which is linked to a spring in series that serves as energy storage, and whose stiffness is set by the spring constant. SEAs were first used to absorb contact shocks and to reduce the peak forces due to the impacts in bipedal walking robots [10]. The limitation of the SEAs is that the stiffness is fixed and cannot be altered during motion, thus limiting the level of compliance to adapt for different tasks. Therefore, a recent second solution proposed the use of variable stiffness actuators (VSAs) [11-13] to handle with energy storage issues. VSAs co

Towards an ontology for soft robots: What is soft?

The advent of soft robotics represents a profound change in the forms robots will take in the future. However, this revolutionary change has already yielded such a diverse collection of robots that attempts at defining this group do not reflect many existing ‘soft’ robots. This paper aims to address this issue by scrutinising a number of descriptions of soft robots arising from a literature review with the intention of determining a coherent meaning for soft. We also present a classification of existing soft robots to initiate the development of a soft robotic ontology. Finally, discrepancies in prescribed ranges of Young’s modulus, a frequently used criterion for the selection of soft materials, are explained and discussed. A detailed visual comparison of these ranges and supporting data is also presented

Review of Development Stages in the Conceptual Design of an Electro Hydrostatic Actuator for Robotics

The design of modern robotic devices faces numerous requirements and limitations which are related to optimization and robustness. Consequently, these stringent requirements have caused improvements in many engineering areas and lead to development of new optimization methods which better handle new complex products designed for application in industrial robots. One of the newly developed methods used in industrial robotics is the concept of a self-contained power device, an Electro-Hydrostatic Actuator (EHA). EHA devices were designed with a central idea, to avoid the possible drawbacks which were present in other types of actuators that are currently used in robotic systems. This paper is a review of the development phases of an EHA device for robotic applications. An overview of the advantages and disadvantages related to current EHA designs are presented, and finally possible ideas for future developments are suggested

Hardware Design and Testing of SUPERball, A Modular Tensegrity Robot

We are developing a system of modular, autonomous "tensegrity end-caps" to enable the rapid exploration of untethered tensegrity robot morphologies and functions. By adopting a self-contained modular approach, different end-caps with various capabilities (such as peak torques, or motor speeds), can be easily combined into new tensegrity robots composed of rods, cables, and actuators of different scale (such as in length, mass, peak loads, etc). As a first step in developing this concept, we are in the process of designing and testing the end-caps for SUPERball (Spherical Underactuated Planetary Exploration Robot), a project at the Dynamic Tensegrity Robotics Lab (DTRL) within NASA Ames's Intelligent Robotics Group. This work discusses the evolving design concepts and test results that have gone into the structural, mechanical, and sensing aspects of SUPERball. This representative tensegrity end-cap design supports robust and repeatable untethered mobility tests of the SUPERball, while providing high force, high displacement actuation, with a low-friction, compliant cabling system

An Active Compliant Control Mode for Interaction with a Pneumatic Soft Robot

Queißer J, Neumann K, Rolf M, Reinhart F, Steil JJ. An Active Compliant Control Mode for Interaction with a Pneumatic Soft Robot. In: 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014). IEEE; 2014: 573-579.Bionic soft robots offer exciting perspectives for more flexible and safe physical interaction with the world and humans. Unfortunately, their hardware design often prevents analytical modeling, which in turn is a prerequisite to apply classical automatic control approaches. On the other hand, also modeling by means of learning is hardly feasible due to many degrees of freedom, high-dimensional state spaces and the softness properties like e.g. mechanical elasticity, which cause limited repeatability and complex dynamics. Nevertheless, the realization of basic control modes is important to leverage the potential of soft robots for applications. We therefore propose a hybrid approach combining classical and learning elements for the realization of an interactive control mode for an elastic bionic robot. It superimposes a low-gain feedback control with a feed-forward control based on a learned simplified model of the inverse dynamics which considers only equilibria of the robot’s dynamics. We demonstrate on the Bionic Handling Assistant how a respective inverse equilibrium model can be learned and effectively exploited for quick and agile control. In a second step, the control scheme is extended to an active compliant control mode. It implements a kind of gravitation compensation to allow for kinesthetic teaching of the robot based on the implicit knowledge of gravitational and mechanical forces that are encoded in the learned equilibrium model.We finally discuss that this control scheme may be implemented also on other soft robots to provide the avenue towards their applications in general manipulation tasks

Variable stiffness robotic hand for stable grasp and flexible handling

Robotic grasping is a challenging area in the field of robotics. When interacting with an object, the dynamic properties of the object will play an important role where a gripper (as a system), which has been shown to be stable as per appropriate stability criteria, can become unstable when coupled to an object. However, including a sufficiently compliant element within the actuation system of the robotic hand can increase the stability of the grasp in the presence of uncertainties. This paper deals with an innovative robotic variable stiffness hand design, VSH1, for industrial applications. The main objective of this work is to realise an affordable, as well as durable, adaptable, and compliant gripper for industrial environments with a larger interval of stiffness variability than similar existing systems. The driving system for the proposed hand consists of two servo motors and one linear spring arranged in a relatively simple fashion. Having just a single spring in the actuation system helps us to achieve a very small hysteresis band and represents a means by which to rapidly control the stiffness. We prove, both mathematically and experimentally, that the proposed model is characterised by a broad range of stiffness. To control the grasp, a first-order sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed and presented. The experimental results provided will show how, despite the relatively simple implementation of our first prototype, the hand performs extremely well in terms of both stiffness variability and force controllability