Control of a Hyper-Redundant Robot for Quality Inspection in Additive Manufacturing for Construction

International audienceAdditive manufacturing is an automated process for producing layer-by-layer material deposition. Recently this technology has been introduced in the industrial construction in order to print houses or smaller piece structures for on-site assembly, with complex geometry. In Additive manufacturing processes, the material deposition step is generally followed by a printing quality inspection step. However, the geometry of printed structures with minimal surfaces is sometimes complex, where rigid structure robots cannot reach certain zones to scan their surfaces. In this paper, a continuum-hyper-redundant manipulator equipped with a camera is attached to the end-effector of a mobile-manipulator robot for the quality inspection process. Indeed, Continuum manipulators can bend along structures with complex geometry; and this inherent flexibility makes them suitable for navigation and operation in congested environments. The number of controlled actuators being greater than the dimension of task space, this work is summarized in a trajectory tracking of hyper-redundant robots. This issue lies in the resolution of strongly nonlinear equations with a real-time computation. Thus, a hybrid methodology which combines the advantages of quantitative and qualitative approaches is used for modeling and resolution of the hyper-redundant robot kinematics. A kinematic controller was designed and a set of experiments was carried out to evaluate the level of efficiency of the proposed approach

Modélisation et commande d'une classe des mobiles omnidirectionnels : robots manipulateurs continus, cas du Robotino XT

Cette thèse s'intéresse à la modélisation et la commande d'une classe des manipulateurs mobiles continus, a savoir le Robotino XT. Ce dernier comporte un manipulateur bionique continu montée sur une plate-forme mobile omnidirectionnel appelée Robotino. Premièrement, en utilisant la logique floue de type-2 et le champ de potentiel artificiel, nous avons proposé un contrôleur hybride intelligent pour la navigation de la plate-forme mobile. Ensuite, une architecture de commande adaptative neuronale a été proposée pour le contrôle de la partie manipulatrice. Cette architecture comporte deux sous-contrôleurs. Le premier sous-contrôleur, associé à la cinématique du manipulateur, et basé sur un système d'apprentissage supervisé distal contrôle les comportements stationnaires du manipulateur; tandis que le second, associé à la cinétique du manipulateur, et basé sur une commande adaptative permet de contrôler les comportements non stationnaires. Enfin, les deux contrôleurs sont coordonnés par un système neuronal pour contrôler le Robotino XT. Les performances de chaque contrôleur sont évaluées en réalisant des expériences en temps réel.This dissertation addresses the modeling and the control of a class of Continuum manipulators, namely the Robotino XT. It consists of a bionic continuum manipulator mounted on an omnidirectional mobile platform named Robotino. Thus, we first propose a hybrid intelligent controller based on Type-2 Fuzzy Logic (type-2 FL) and Artificial Potential Function (APF) concepts for the mobile platform navigation. Then, an adaptive neural network controller is proposed for the manipulator part. The latter includes two sub-controllers. The first one, associated with the arm kinematics, and based on Distal Supervised Learning (DSL) scheme, deals with stationary behaviors of the manipulator; while the second, associated with the arm kinetics, and based on adaptive control, is applied to the non stationary behaviors. Finally, the two controllers are coordinated by a neural network system to control the Robotino XT. The performance of each controller is assessed by conducting real-time experiments

Hybrid Approach for Modeling and Solving of Kinematics of a Compact Bionic Handling Assistant Manipulator

International audience—This paper deals with a methodology for a real-time solving of a complex kinematics of a class of continuum manipu-lators, namely the Compact Bionic Handling Assistant (CBHA). First, a quantitative approach is used to model kinematically the CBHA inspired from the modeling of parallel rigid manipulators. For this case, the CBHA is modeled as a series of vertebrae, where each vertebra is connected to the next one through a flexible link. The latter named an inter-vertebra is modeled by a 3UPS-1UP (Universal-Prismatic-Spherical) joints. The kinematic models of the CBHA are derived from the Inverse Kinematic Equations (IKE) of each inter-vertebra. A qualitative approach based on neural networks is used to provide approximated solutions of the IKE for real-time implementation. Thus, the combination of the advantages of quantitative and qualitative approaches allows proposing a hybrid methodology for accurate modeling and solving the kinematics of this class of continuum robots. A set of experiments are conducted using a CBHA in order evaluate the level of efficiency of the proposed hybrid approach

Control of a Hyper-Redundant Robot for Quality Inspection in Additive Manufacturing for Construction

International audienceAdditive manufacturing is an automated process for producing layer-by-layer material deposition. Recently this technology has been introduced in the industrial construction in order to print houses or smaller piece structures for on-site assembly, with complex geometry. In Additive manufacturing processes, the material deposition step is generally followed by a printing quality inspection step. However, the geometry of printed structures with minimal surfaces is sometimes complex, where rigid structure robots cannot reach certain zones to scan their surfaces. In this paper, a continuum-hyper-redundant manipulator equipped with a camera is attached to the end-effector of a mobile-manipulator robot for the quality inspection process. Indeed, Continuum manipulators can bend along structures with complex geometry; and this inherent flexibility makes them suitable for navigation and operation in congested environments. The number of controlled actuators being greater than the dimension of task space, this work is summarized in a trajectory tracking of hyper-redundant robots. This issue lies in the resolution of strongly nonlinear equations with a real-time computation. Thus, a hybrid methodology which combines the advantages of quantitative and qualitative approaches is used for modeling and resolution of the hyper-redundant robot kinematics. A kinematic controller was designed and a set of experiments was carried out to evaluate the level of efficiency of the proposed approach

A Learning Framework to Inverse Kinematics of Redundant Manipulators

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PH Model-based Shape Reconstruction of Heterogeneous Continuum Closed Loop Kinematic Chain: An Application to skipping Rope

International audienceSoft robotics is a swiftly growing research area these days. Modeling continuum robots accurately is still a demanding field. The paper aims to propose a shape reconstruction method and the estimation of the kinematic behavior of heterogeneous continuum robot in closed loop kinematic configuration, by using Pythagorean Hodograph (PH) curves. The validation of the model approach has been tested on cooperative continuum robots, namely Compact Bionic Handling Arms (CBHA), driving an intermediate flexible rope (a passive flexible link), by using a 3D tracking system. Experimental comparison of the proposed approach with the existing approaches is performed in terms of accuracy as well as the time cost

A novel approach to integrate artificial potential field and fuzzy logic into a common framework for robots autonomous navigation

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Adaptive Neural Network Control of a Compact Bionic Handling Arm

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Inverse Kinematic modeling of a class of continuum bionic handling arm

International audience— This paper presents a development of Inverse Kinematic Model (IKM) of a class of Continuum Bionic Handling Arm (CBHA). The modeling approach is inspired from a model of a hyper-redundant backbone-based manipulator, combined with an optimal placement of the backbones. The latter is obtained using an optimization algorithm, based on a Sequential Quadratic Program (SQP). The main interest of developing such model is to design an autonomous control of the CBHA. The high number of Degrees of Freedom (DoF) present on the continuum structure of the CBHA, makes difficult the synthesis of the analytical IKM for the overall arm. To resolve this issue, it is proposed to assimilate the CBHA's behavior to that of a hyper-redundant robot manipulator. This robot is represented by a concatenation of hybrid (parallel and serial) vertebrae along the vertebral column or backbones of the CBHA. The combination of all these vertebra allows the reconstruction with optimal configuration of the real posture of the continuum arm inside its workspace, with only the knowledge of the Cartesian coordinates of the robot pose. Simulations and experimental validation of the model demonstrate the efficiency of the modeling approach for this class of CBHA

Modeling of Continuum Manipulators using Pythagorean Hodograph Curves

International audienceResearch on continuum manipulators is increasingly developing in the context of bionic robotics because of their many advantages over conventional rigid manipulators. Due to their soft structure, they have inherent flexibility which makes it a huge challenge to control them with high performances. Before elaborating a control strategy of such robots, it is essential to reconstruct first the behavior of the robot through the development of an approximate behavioral model. This can be kinematic or dynamic depending on the conditions of operation of the robot itself. Kinematically, two types of modeling methods exist to describe the robot behavior, quantitative methods describe a model-based method; and qualitative methods, describe a learning-based method. In kinematic modeling of continuum manipulator, the assumption of constant curvature is often considered to simplify the model formulation. In this work, a quantitative modeling method is proposed, based on the Pythagorean Hodograph (PH) curves. The aim is to obtain a 3D reconstruction of the shape of the continuum manipulator with variable curvature, allowing the calculation of its inverse kinematic model. It is noticed that the performances of the PH-based kinematic modeling of continuum manipulators are considerable regarding position accuracy, shape reconstruction and time-cost of the model calculation, than other kinematic modeling methods, for two cases: free load manipulation and variable load manipulation. This modeling method is applied to Compact Bionic Handling Assistant (CBHA) manipulator for validation. The results are compared with other inverse kinematic models developed in case of CBHA manipulator