Biped robot walking control on inclined planes with fuzzy parameter adaptation

The bipedal structure is suitable for a robot functioning in the human environment, and assuming assistive roles. However, the bipedal walk is a poses a difficult control problem. Walking on even floor is not satisfactory for the applicability of a humanoid robot. This paper presents a study on bipedal walk on inclined planes. A Zero Moment Point (ZMP) based reference generation technique is employed. The orientation of the upper body is adjusted online by a fuzzy logic system to adapt to different walking surface slopes. This system uses a sampling time larger than the one of the joint space position controllers. A newly defined measure of the oscillatory behavior of the body pitch angle and the average value of the pelvis pitch angle are used as inputs to the fuzzy adaptation system. A 12-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) biped robot model is used in the full-dynamics 3-D simulations. Simulations are carried out on even floor and inclined planes with different slopes. The results indicate that the fuzzy adaptation algorithms presented are successful in enabling the robot to climb slopes of 5.6 degrees (10 percent)

Robust Tracking of Bio-Inspired References for a Biped Robot Using Geometric Algebra and Sliding Mode Control

Controlling walking biped robots is a challenging problem due to its complex and uncertain dynamics. In order to tackle this, we propose a sliding mode controller based on a dynamic model which was obtained using the conformal geometric algebra approach (CGA). The CGA framework permits us to use lines, points, and other geometric entities, to obtain the Lagrange equations of the system. The references for the joints of the robot were bio-inspired in the kinematics of a walking human body. The first and second derivatives of the reference signal were obtained through an exact robust differentiator based on high order sliding mode. The performance of the proposed control schemes are illustrated through simulation.ITESO, A.C

Finite-time disturbance reconstruction and robust fractional-order controller design for hybrid port-Hamiltonian dynamics of biped robots

In this paper, disturbance reconstruction and robust trajectory tracking control of biped robots with hybrid dynamics in the port-Hamiltonian form is investigated. A new type of Hamiltonian function is introduced, which ensures the finite-time stability of the closed-loop system. The proposed control system consists of two loops: an inner and an outer loop. A fractional proportional-integral-derivative filter is used to achieve finite-time convergence for position tracking errors at the outer loop. A fractional-order sliding mode controller acts as a centralized controller at the inner-loop, ensuring the finite-time stability of the velocity tracking error. In this loop, the undesired effects of unknown external disturbance and parameter uncertainties are compensated using estimators. Two disturbance estimators are envisioned. The former is designed using fractional calculus. The latter is an adaptive estimator, and it is constructed using the general dynamic of biped robots. Stability analysis shows that the closed-loop system is finite-time stable in both contact-less and impact phases. Simulation studies on two types of biped robots (i.e., two-link walker and RABBIT biped robot) demonstrate the proposed controller's tracking performance and disturbance rejection capability

Decentralized adaptive partitioned approximation control of high degrees-of-freedom robotic manipulators considering three actuator control modes

International audiencePartitioned approximation control is avoided in most decentralized control algorithms; however, it is essential to design a feedforward control term for improving the tracking accuracy of the desired references. In addition, consideration of actuator dynamics is important for a robot with high-velocity movement and highly varying loads. As a result, this work is focused on decentralized adaptive partitioned approximation control for complex robotic systems using the orthogonal basis functions as strong approximators. In essence, the partitioned approximation technique is intrinsically decentralized with some modifications. Three actuator control modes are considered in this study: (i) a torque control mode in which the armature current is well controlled by a current servo amplifier and the motor torque/current constant is known, (ii) a current control mode in which the torque/current constant is unknown, and (iii) a voltage control mode with no current servo control being available. The proposed decentralized control law consists of three terms: the partitioned approximation-based feedforward term that is necessary for precise tracking, the high gain-based feedback term, and the adaptive sliding gain-based term for compensation of modeling error. The passivity property is essential to prove the stability of local stability of the individual subsystem with guaranteed global stability. Two case studies are used to prove the validity of the proposed controller: a two-link manipulator and a six-link biped robot

Robust Tracking of Bio-Inspired References for a Biped Robot Using Geometric Algebra and Sliding Modes

Controlling walking biped robots is a challenging problem due to its complex and uncertain dynamics. In order to tackle this, we propose a sliding mode controller based on a dynamic model which was obtained using the conformal geometric algebra approach (CGA). The CGA framework permits us to use lines, points, and other geometric entities, to obtain the Lagrange equations of the system. The references for the joints of the robot were bio-inspired in the kinematics of a walking human body. The first and second derivatives of the reference signal were obtained through an exact robust differentiator based on high order sliding modes. The performance of the proposed control scheme is illustrated through simulation.CINVESTA

Continuous second order sliding mode based finite time tracking of a fully actuated biped robot

International audienceA second order sliding mode controller is modified to form a continuous homogeneous controller. Uniform finite time stability is proved by extending the homogeneity principle of discontinuous systems to the continuous case with uniformly decaying piece-wise continuous nonhomogeneous disturbances. The modified controller is then utilised to track reference trajectories for all the joints of a fully actuated biped robot where the joint torque is modeled as the control input. The modified controller ensures the attainment of a finite settling time between two successive impacts. The main contribution of the paper is to provide straightforward and realizable engineering guidelines for reference trajectory generation and for tuning a robust finite time controller in order to achieve stable gait of a biped in the presence of an external force disturbance. Such a disturbance has destabilising effects in both continuous and impact phases. Numerical simulations of a biped robot are shown to support the theoretical results

Stability of Surface Contacts for Humanoid Robots: Closed-Form Formulae of the Contact Wrench Cone for Rectangular Support Areas

Humanoid robots locomote by making and breaking contacts with their environment. A crucial problem is therefore to find precise criteria for a given contact to remain stable or to break. For rigid surface contacts, the most general criterion is the Contact Wrench Condition (CWC). To check whether a motion satisfies the CWC, existing approaches take into account a large number of individual contact forces (for instance, one at each vertex of the support polygon), which is computationally costly and prevents the use of efficient inverse-dynamics methods. Here we argue that the CWC can be explicitly computed without reference to individual contact forces, and give closed-form formulae in the case of rectangular surfaces -- which is of practical importance. It turns out that these formulae simply and naturally express three conditions: (i) Coulomb friction on the resultant force, (ii) ZMP inside the support area, and (iii) bounds on the yaw torque. Conditions (i) and (ii) are already known, but condition (iii) is, to the best of our knowledge, novel. It is also of particular interest for biped locomotion, where undesired foot yaw rotations are a known issue. We also show that our formulae yield simpler and faster computations than existing approaches for humanoid motions in single support, and demonstrate their consistency in the OpenHRP simulator.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

An Improved Fuzzy Brain Emotional Learning Model Network Controller for Humanoid Robots

The brain emotional learning (BEL) system was inspired by the biological amygdala-orbitofrontal model to mimic the high speed of the emotional learning mechanism in the mammalian brain, which has been successfully applied in many real-world applications. Despite of its success, such system often suffers from slow convergence for online humanoid robotic control. This paper presents an improved fuzzy BEL model (iFBEL) neural network by integrating a fuzzy neural network (FNN) to a conventional BEL, in an effort to better support humanoid robots. In particular, the system inputs are passed into a sensory and emotional channels that jointly produce the final outputs of the network. The non-linear approximation ability of the iFBEL is achieved by taking the BEL network as the emotional channel. The proposed iFBEL works with a robust controller in generating the hand and gait motion of a humanoid robot. The updating rules of the iFBEL-based controller are composed of two parts, including a sensory channel followed by the updating rules of the conventional BEL model, and the updating rules of the FNN and the robust controller which are derived from the "Lyapunov" function. The experiments on a three-joint robot manipulator and a six-joint biped robot demonstrated the superiority of the proposed system in reference to a conventional proportional-integral-derivative controller and a fuzzy cerebellar model articulation controller, based on the more accurate and faster control performance of the proposed iFBEL

Quasi optimal sagittal gait of a biped robot with a new structure of knee joint

The design of humanoid robots has been a tricky challenge for several years. Due to the kinematic complexity of human joints, their movements are notoriously difficult to be reproduced by a mechanism. The human knees allow movements including rolling and sliding, and therefore the design of new bioinspired knees is of utmost importance for the reproduction of anthropomorphic walking in the sagittal plane. In this article, the kinematic characteristics of knees were analyzed and a mechanical solution for reproducing them is proposed. The geometrical, kinematic and dynamic models are built together with an impact model for a biped robot with the new knee kinematic. The walking gait is studied as a problem of parametric optimization under constraints. The trajectories of walking are approximated by mathematical functions for a gait composed of single support phases with impacts. Energy criteria allow comparing the robot provided with the new rolling knee mechanism and a robot equipped with revolute knee joints. The results of the optimizations show that the rolling knee brings a decrease of the sthenic criterion. The comparisons of torques are also observed to show the difference of energy distribution between the actuators. For the same actuator selection, these results prove that the robot with rolling knees can walk longer than the robot with revolute joint knees.ANR R2A