A Luenberger-style Observer for Robot Manipulators with Position Measurements

This paper presents a novel Luenberger-style observer for robot manipulators with position measurements. Under the assumption that the state evolutions that are to be observed have bounded velocities, it is shown that the origin of the observation error dynamics is globally exponentially stable and that the corresponding convergence rate can be made arbitrarily high by increasing a gain of the observer. Comparisons and relations between the proposed observer and existing observers are discussed. The effectiveness of the result here presented is illustrated by a simulation of the observer for the Pendubot, an underactuated two-joint manipulator.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

A passivity approach to controller-observer design for robots

Passivity-based control methods for robots, which achieve the control objective by reshaping the robot system's natural energy via state feedback, have, from a practical point of view, some very attractive properties. However, the poor quality of velocity measurements may significantly deteriorate the control performance of these methods. In this paper the authors propose a design strategy that utilizes the passivity concept in order to develop combined controller-observer systems for robot motion control using position measurements only. To this end, first a desired energy function for the closed-loop system is introduced, and next the controller-observer combination is constructed such that the closed-loop system matches this energy function, whereas damping is included in the controller- observer system to assure asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. A key point in this design strategy is a fine tuning of the controller and observer structure to each other, which provides solutions to the output-feedback robot control problem that are conceptually simple and easily implementable in industrial robot applications. Experimental tests on a two-DOF manipulator system illustrate that the proposed controller-observer systems enable the achievement of higher performance levels compared to the frequently used practice of numerical position differentiation for obtaining a velocity estimat

Controller-observer design and dynamic parameter identification for model-based control of an electromechanical lower-limb rehabilitation system

[EN] Rehabilitation is a hazardous task for a mechanical system, since the device has to interact with the human extremities without the hands-on experience the physiotherapist acquires over time. A gap needs to be filled in terms of designing effective controllers for this type of devices. In this respect, the paper describes the design of a model-based control for an electromechanical lower-limb rehabilitation system based on a parallel kinematic mechanism. A controller-observer was designed for estimating joint velocities, which are then used in a hybrid position/force control scheme. The model parameters are identified by customising an approach based on identifying only the relevant system dynamics parameters. Findings obtained through simulations show evidence of improvement in tracking performance compared with those where the velocity was estimated by numerical differentiation. The controller is also implemented in an actual electromechanical system for lower-limb rehabilitation tasks. Findings based on rehabilitation tasks confirm the findings from simulations.This work was partially financed by the Plan Nacional de I+D, Comision Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologia (FEDERCICYT) under the project DPI2013-44227-R and by the Instituto U. de Automatica e Informatica Industrial (ai2) of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.Valera Fernández, Á.; Díaz-Rodríguez, M.; Vallés Miquel, M.; Oliver, E.; Mata Amela, V.; Page Del Pozo, AF. (2017). Controller-observer design and dynamic parameter identification for model-based control of an electromechanical lower-limb rehabilitation system. International Journal of Control. 90(4):702-714. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207179.2016.1215529S702714904Åström, K. J., & Murray, R. M. (2010). Feedback Systems. doi:10.2307/j.ctvcm4gdkAtkeson, C. G., An, C. H., & Hollerbach, J. M. (1986). 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Practical Model-based and Robust Control of Parallel Manipulators Using Passivity and Sliding Mode Theory

This chapter provides a practical strategy to realize accurate and robust control for 6 DOFs (degrees of freedom) parallel robots. The presented approach consists in two parts. The first basic part is based on the the compensation of the desired dynamics in combination with controller/observer for the single actuators. The passivity formalism offers an excellent framework to design and to tune the closed-loop dynamics, such that the desired behavior is obtained. The basic algorithm is proved to be locally robust towards uncertainties. The second part of the control strategy consists in a sliding mode controller. To keep the practical and computational efficient implementation, the proposed switching control considers explicitly only the friction model. Here we opt for the so called model-decomposition paradigm and we use additional integral action to improve robustness. The proposed approach is substantiated with experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness and success of the strategy that keeps control setup simple and intuitive. Keywords parallel manipulators, robust control, passivity formalism, sliding mode control, desired dynamics compensation, velocity observe

Force Estimation for Teleoperating Industrial Robots

As the energy on the particle accelerators or heavy ion accelerators such as CERN or GSI, fusion reactors such as JET or ITER, or other scientific experiments is increased, it is becoming increasingly necessary to use remote handling techniques in order to interact with the remote and radioactive environment

Adaptive Motion Estimation and Control of Intelligent Walkers

One of the most critical factors in the quality of elderly lives is their ability to move. As the size of the ageing society grows, more elderly people suffer from walking impairments. Most of them prefer to stay at home due to the shortage of the nursing care staff, since they deal with the daily challenges alone. Robotics researchers have developed various intelligent walking support systems to meet the needs of elderly and handicapped people. A particular problem in path tracking for such systems is maintaining the tracking performance, which is affected by the center of gravity (CG) shifts and load changes due to human-walker interactions. This thesis focuses on design of feedback controllers for safe motion of intelligent walker (i-walker) systems robust to CG shifts and load changes. Our design follows a two level approach, one for kinematics, the other for dynamics. The high level kinematic controller is designed based on integrator backstepping to produce desired velocities required for trajectory tracking. The low level dynamic controller is composed of a feedback linearization unit and a linear feedback controller to apply the control torque for tracking the desired velocity produced by the high level kinematic controller. As dynamic controllers, proportional-derivative (PD) and sliding mode controllers (SMCs) are designed. In our initial design, we assume that all system states are available. However, in the actual case, even if the wheel velocities can be measured with some sensor devices like tachometers, the measurements carry noise, which poses important problems in control algorithms. To obtain the estimates of the wheel velocities, avoiding the noise problems, the design of sliding mode observers and high gain observers is studied. The state feedback PD and SMC schemes are later integrated with these observers to form implementable output feedback controllers. In practice, the human mass and the distance due to the CG shift depend on the user. To address this issue, the output feedback control designs are further made adaptive, integrating with a parameter identifier to estimate these variables. The parameter identifier design involves a linear parametric model of the i-walker system dynamics and a least-square adaptive law based on this parametric model. Adaptive versions of the above observers and control designs are done utilizing estimated parameters and states. The effectiveness and applicability of the proposed controllers are verified via various simulations in MATLAB/Simulink environment

Non-Linear Robust Observers For Systems With Non-Collocated Sensors And Actuators

Challenges in controlling highly nonlinear systems are not limited to the development of sophisticated control algorithms that are tolerant to significant modeling imprecision and external disturbances. Additional challenges stem from the implementation of the control algorithm such as the availability of the state variables needed for the computation of the control signals, and the adverse effects induced by non-collocated sensors and actuators. The present work investigates the adverse effects of non-collocated sensors and actuators on the phase characteristics of flexible structures and the ensuing implications on the performance of structural controllers. Two closed-loop systems are considered and their phase angle contours have been generated as functions of the normalized sensor location and the excitation frequency. These contours were instrumental in the development of remedial actions for rendering structural controllers immune to the detrimental effects of non-collocated sensors and actuators. Moreover, the current work has focused on providing experimental validation for the robust performances of a self-tuning observer and a sliding mode observer. The observers are designed based on the variable structure systems theory and the self-tuning fuzzy logic scheme. Their robustness and self-tuning characteristics allow one to use an imprecise model of the system and eliminate the need for the extensive tuning associated with a fixed rule-based expert fuzzy inference system. The first phase of the experimental work was conducted in a controlled environment on a flexible spherical robotic manipulator whose natural frequencies are configuration-dependent. Both controllers have yielded accurate estimates of the required state variables in spite of significant modeling imprecision. The observers were also tested under a completely uncontrolled environment, which involves a 16-ft boat operating in open-water under different sea states. Such an experimental work necessitates the development of a supervisory control algorithm to perform PTP tasks, prescribed throttle arm and steering tasks, surge speed and heading tracking tasks, or recovery maneuvers. This system has been implemented herein to perform prescribed throttle arm and steering control tasks based on estimated rather than measured state variables. These experiments served to validate the observers in a completely uncontrolled environment and proved their viability as reliable techniques for providing accurate estimates for the required state variables