1,671 research outputs found
Keep Rollin' - Whole-Body Motion Control and Planning for Wheeled Quadrupedal Robots
We show dynamic locomotion strategies for wheeled quadrupedal robots, which
combine the advantages of both walking and driving. The developed optimization
framework tightly integrates the additional degrees of freedom introduced by
the wheels. Our approach relies on a zero-moment point based motion
optimization which continuously updates reference trajectories. The reference
motions are tracked by a hierarchical whole-body controller which computes
optimal generalized accelerations and contact forces by solving a sequence of
prioritized tasks including the nonholonomic rolling constraints. Our approach
has been tested on ANYmal, a quadrupedal robot that is fully torque-controlled
including the non-steerable wheels attached to its legs. We conducted
experiments on flat and inclined terrains as well as over steps, whereby we
show that integrating the wheels into the motion control and planning framework
results in intuitive motion trajectories, which enable more robust and dynamic
locomotion compared to other wheeled-legged robots. Moreover, with a speed of 4
m/s and a reduction of the cost of transport by 83 % we prove the superiority
of wheeled-legged robots compared to their legged counterparts.Comment: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter
Intelligent Adaptive Motion Control for Ground Wheeled Vehicles
In this paper a new intelligent adaptive control is applied to solve a problem of motion control of ground vehicles with two independent wheels actuated by a differential drive. The major objective of this work is to obtain a motion control system by using a new fuzzy inference mechanism where the Lyapunov’s stability can be assured. In particular the parameters of the kinematical control law are obtained using an intelligent Fuzzy mechanism, where the properties of the Fuzzy maps have been established to have the stability above. Due to the nonlinear map of the intelligent fuzzy inference mechanism (i.e. fuzzy rules and value of the rule), the parameters above are not constant, but, time after time, based on empirical fuzzy rules, they are updated in function of the values of the tracking errors. Since the fuzzy maps are adjusted based on the control performances, the parameters updating assures a robustness and fast convergence of the tracking errors. Also, since the vehicle dynamics and kinematics can be completely unknown, a dynamical and kinematical adaptive control is added. The proposed fuzzy controller has been implemented for a real nonholonomic electrical vehicle. Therefore system robustness and stability performance are verified through simulations and experimental studies
Robust control of underactuated wheeled mobile manipulators using GPI disturbance observers
This article describes the design of a linear observer–linear controller-based robust output feedback scheme for output reference trajectory tracking tasks in the case of nonlinear, multivariable, nonholonomic underactuated mobile manipulators. The proposed linear feedback scheme is based on the use of a classical linear feedback controller and suitably extended, high-gain, linear Generalized Proportional Integral (GPI) observers, thus aiding the linear feedback controllers to provide an accurate simultaneous estimation of each flat output associated phase variables and of the exogenous and perturbation inputs. This information is used in the proposed feedback controller in (a) approximate, yet close, cancelations, as lumped unstructured time-varying terms, of the influence of the highly coupled nonlinearities, and (b) the devising of proper linear output feedback control laws based on the approximate estimates of the string of phase variables associated with the flat outputs simultaneously provided by the disturbance observers. Simulations reveal the effectiveness of the proposed approach
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