Design of an adaptive neural predictive nonlinear controller for nonholonomic mobile robot system based on posture identifier in the presence of disturbance

This paper proposes an adaptive neural predictive nonlinear controller to guide a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot during continuous and non-continuous gradients trajectory tracking. The structure of the controller consists of two models that describe the kinematics and dynamics of the mobile robot system and a feedforward neural controller. The models are modified Elman neural network and feedforward multi-layer perceptron respectively. The modified Elman neural network model is trained off-line and on-line stages to guarantee the outputs of the model accurately represent the actual outputs of the mobile robot system. The trained neural model acts as the position and orientation identifier. The feedforward neural controller is trained off-line and adaptive weights are adapted on-line to find the reference torques, which controls the steady-state outputs of the mobile robot system. The feedback neural controller is based on the posture neural identifier and quadratic performance index optimization algorithm to find the optimal torque action in the transient state for N-step-ahead prediction. General back propagation algorithm is used to learn the feedforward neural controller and the posture neural identifier. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive neural predictive control algorithm; this is demonstrated by the minimised tracking error and the smoothness of the torque control signal obtained with bounded external disturbances

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

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

Sliding Mode Control for Trajectory Tracking of a Non-holonomic Mobile Robot using Adaptive Neural Networks

In this work a sliding mode control method for a non-holonomic mobile robot using an adaptive neural network is proposed. Due to this property and restricted mobility, the trajectory tracking of this system has been one of the research topics for the last ten years. The proposed control structure combines a feedback linearization model, based on a nominal kinematic model, and a practical design that combines an indirect neural adaptation technique with sliding mode control to compensate for the dynamics of the robot. A neural sliding mode controller is used to approximate the equivalent control in the neighbourhood of the sliding manifold, using an online adaptation scheme. A sliding control is appended to ensure that the neural sliding mode control can achieve a stable closed-loop system for the trajectory-tracking control of a mobile robot with unknown non-linear dynamics. Also, the proposed control technique can reduce the steady-state error using the online adaptive neural network with sliding mode control; the design is based on Lyapunov’s theory. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in controlling mobile robots with large dynamic uncertaintiesFil: Rossomando, Francisco Guido. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Juan. Instituto de Automática. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Automática; ArgentinaFil: Soria, Carlos Miguel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Juan. Instituto de Automática. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Automática; ArgentinaFil: Carelli Albarracin, Ricardo Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Juan. Instituto de Automática. Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Facultad de Ingeniería. Instituto de Automática; Argentin

Bounded Distributed Flocking Control of Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

There have been numerous studies on the problem of flocking control for multiagent systems whose simplified models are presented in terms of point-mass elements. Meanwhile, full dynamic models pose some challenging problems in addressing the flocking control problem of mobile robots due to their nonholonomic dynamic properties. Taking practical constraints into consideration, we propose a novel approach to distributed flocking control of nonholonomic mobile robots by bounded feedback. The flocking control objectives consist of velocity consensus, collision avoidance, and cohesion maintenance among mobile robots. A flocking control protocol which is based on the information of neighbor mobile robots is constructed. The theoretical analysis is conducted with the help of a Lyapunov-like function and graph theory. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed distributed flocking control scheme

Trajectory Tracking and Control of Differential Drive Robot for Predefined Regular Geometrical Path

AbstractTrajectories made by concatenating straight motion and in place turning primitive are one that can be easily followed by a differential drive robot. This paper presents trajectory tracking and control of differential drive robots along a predefined regular geometrical path made up of these primitives. A control algorithm was developed to control the robot along different trajectories. The algorithm takes user input from a user interface through which one can select the type of trajectory, dimensions of the trajectory and tracking velocity. Simulations were carried out to obtain the trajectory tracked by the robot using commercial available software MATLAB, Release 2010. Experiments were conducted for tracking regular trajectories such as Triangular, Rectangular and Square and these experimental results were found to be in good agreement with the simulation results