3 research outputs found
Towards Autonomous Operation of Robonaut 2
The Robonaut 2 (R2) platform, as shown in Figure 1, was designed through a collaboration between NASA and General Motors to be a capable robotic assistant with the dexterity similar to a suited astronaut [1]. An R2 robot was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2011 and, in doing so, became the first humanoid robot in space. Its capabilities are presently being tested and expanded to increase its usefulness to the crew. Current work on R2 includes the addition of a mobility platform to allow the robot to complete tasks (such as cleaning, maintenance, or simple construction activities) both inside and outside of the ISS. To support these new activities, R2's software architecture is being developed to provide efficient ways of programming robust and autonomous behavior. In particular, a multi-tiered software architecture is proposed that combines principles of low-level feedback control with higher-level planners that accomplish behavioral goals at the task level given the run-time context, user constraints, the health of the system, and so on. The proposed architecture is shown in Figure 2. At the lowest-level, the resource level, there exists the various sensory and motor signals available to the system. The sensory signals for a robot such as R2 include multiple channels of force/torque data, joint or Cartesian positions calculated through the robot's proprioception, and signals derived from objects observable by its cameras
Task-Priority Control of Redundant Robotic Systems using Control Lyapunov and Control Barrier Function based Quadratic Programs
This paper presents a novel task-priority control framework for redundant
robotic systems based on a hierarchy of control Lyapunov function (CLF) and
control barrier function (CBF) based quadratic programs (QPs). The proposed
method guarantees strict priority among different groups of tasks such as
safety-related, operational and optimization tasks. Moreover, a soft priority
measure in the form of penalty parameters can be employed to prioritize tasks
at the same priority level. As opposed to kinematic control schemes, the
proposed framework is a holistic approach to control of redundant robotic
systems, which solves the redundancy resolution, dynamic control and control
allocation problems simultaneously. Numerical simulations of a hyper-redundant
articulated intervention autonomous underwater vehicle (AIAUV) is presented to
validate the proposed framework.Comment: 21st IFAC World Congres