Trajectory Planning of a Constrained Flexible Manipulator

In this paper, we propose an adaptive nonlinear strategy for the motion and force control of manipulators with flexible joints. Our approach provides force control when in contact and robust motion control in its absence, all without the need for a control switch. This self-tuning behaviour for mixed contact/non-contact scenarios results from a unified formulation of force and motion control, with an integral transpose-based inverse kinematics core and adaptive update laws to cope with the manipulator flexibility and the contact stiffnesses. The global boundedness of all signals and the asymptotic stability of this controller are guaranteed via Lyapunov analysis. Finally, we validate its applicability experimentally by using low-cost hardware in a realistic mixed-contact scenario, demonstrating low computational demand.

In the recent assembly lines, the frequency of changing processes has been increasing in line with high mix production, but because these changes are carried out by operator, the burden of changing processes has increased as well. This situation has arisen because of the fact that since the robots being used at present automatic assembly lines are based on a simple teaching and playing back method, human workers must renew instructions for each act of changing a work object and also that dedicated machines are necessary due to the inability of making precision assembly,thereby inviting declines in total operational rates and increases in cost. These facts are limiting the use of robot based automation itself and are one of the important factors for the declining international competitive power. Under these circumstances, with the aim of constructing sophisticated production systems that are capable of dealing with process changes automatically without the use of human labor, a project called ""Research & Development of Process Adaptive Flexible Robots""was proposed and was adopted to the Regional Consortium Research and Development Enterprise supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, and was adopted. The research period was to be 3 years from the fiscal year 1997 to the fiscal year 1999, and the total research fund was to be 360 million yen. In more specific terms, an engine assembly line and a semiconductor testing process were chosen as research subjects; and developmental research was carried out for elemental techniques that are necessary for the flexible execution of tasks such as piston insertion causing no damage to walls even with a minute clearance, or IC chip insertion causing no plastic deformation even with positional dislocation, though these tasks must be carried out when works change in type, size, etc.; and the researchers started the work of developing system integration technology that would achieve these task objectives in the optimal manner. Attention was focused rather on ""force control"" of which humans make skillful use than on developmental work based on the conventional position control technology, and development objectives were set not only to achieve a breakthrough for putting force control technology into practice by way of the integration of flexible force control and high aprecision position control and also by way of controlling the vibrations of complex machine systems, but also to demonstrate the research results by means of two prototypes of a flexible robot for assembly lines and an inserter for IC chip testing. The present special issue is a collection of results achieved by the participating research organization in the present research and development work, and it will be a great pleasure for its editors if this issue contribute seven a little. toward the future practical use of force control. Finally, sincere appreciation is expressed to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization for providing an opportunity for carrying out this research and development work, as well as to all the organizations for their participation in the project.

An examination is performed on the dynamics and control issues for a robotic manipulator with link structural flexibility modelled during the execution of a task that requires the robot tip to contact fixed rigid objects. A multi-time-scale fuzzy logic controller is applied to this system. The large-scale system is decomposed into a finite number of reduced-order subsystems using the singular perturbation approach. A hierarchical ordering of fuzzy rules is used to reduce the size of the inference engine. Real-time implementation of fuzzy controllers can help reduce the burden of large-sized rule sets by fusing sensory data before input and the system's output to the inference engine. Using this approach the control of the force and position of the robot end point is possible while the end-effector moves on the constraint surface.

The use of flexible robots can be easily justified in two main cases: (1) when the weight of the robot has to be minimized and (2) when collisions between the robot and the environment are foreseen, since a flexible, lightweight robot implies less impact energy. The position control of these robots has already been analyzed in previous communications. However, the second of these cases justifying the use of flexible robots requires further consideration, leading to the development of a force controller. Inmost up to date analysis the force control is studied beginning from a known contact point at a given collision time. In a more realistic approach, however, an accurate detection of the collision would be needed prior to dealing with the force control. After developing a reliable position controller for a three‐degree‐of‐freedom flexible robot using strain gauges placed over the robot structure, in this paper we deal with the possibility of carrying out the collision detection for the same prototype. This has been easily achieved by analyzing some estimated signals such as tip position and tip velocity. However, a complete analysis of the information obtained with the sensors has been required to obtain those estimates and a signal processing scheme had to be devised for a previous filtering of the original signals from the sensors (encoders and strain gauges). This work has been carried out as a first step towards the position/force control. Experimental results on a three‐degree‐of‐freedom flexible arm prototype are presented to verify how well this method performs. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We present a novel control concept that solves a wide range of surface tracking tasks for manipulators with defined contact to (moving) rigid objects. The position based neural force control (NFC-P) consists of a hybrid force/position controller that accurately generates contact forces to objects with arbitrary flexibility and uncertain distance or shape. NFC-P performs force control by modifying the desired joint angle changes in force direction. These are fed into a computed torque controller, where the inverse dynamics of the manipulator is represented by neural networks. NFC-P includes a neural trajectory generating tool for smooth and kinematical valid contact trajectories with the possibility to adapt the trajectories to the unknown shape of the surface online. The kinematical mappings guarantee singularity robustness (SR) in the entire workspace. Results from real-time experiments are presented using a 6-DOF industrial manipulator as testbed.

Evaluation of the performance of a passive–active vibration isolation system

Spinning with a static contact surface is an energy-saving method to reduce spun yarn hairiness; however, the spun yarn irregularity and tensile properties are deteriorated. To prohibit the deteriorations, this paper introduces a rotary grooved surface contacting ring spinning strand within the yarn formation zone. In theory, the modeling analysis of spinning with contact surface is conducted to reveal the prohibition mechanism of yarn irregularity and tensile property deteriorations for a rotary grooved surface. Theoretical analysis results indicated that groove-yarn surface friction could wrap the concentrated hairs onto yarn stem while block inflowing twists to the spinning strangle zone; the rotary grooved surface could reduce twist blockage and hair wrapping concentrations to better the situation after a comparison with the static grooved surface. Then, two kinds of specially-designed grooved cylinders (one was rotatable while the other was static) were used to validate the theoretical analysis. The experimental results showed that, unlike the static grooved cylinder which significantly deteriorated the original yarn unevenness CVm, the rotary achieved significant hairiness reduction without any significant deterioration of other yarn properties. This might be due to the decreased friction and twist propagation for the rotary grooved cylinder contacting the spinning strand. In this case, spinning with a rotary grooved cylinder was preferably applied in the first step to control ring spun yarn hairiness.

Hydraulic power systems have greater flexibility and can produce more power than mechanical and electrical systems of equal size. The aim of this paper is to describe results derived from an experimental study on a power hydraulic testing machine with hybrid force and position control. The paper includes the description and fabrication of this novel testing system, named electro-hydraulic load simulator (EHLS), for conducting a performance and stability test in a bench system where force or position control is important. In order to improve the control performance of the loading system and to eliminate or reduce noise, a parallel force and position control strategy using the proportional integral derivative (PID) control method, an online self-tuning fuzzy-neural mechanism, and system identification techniques are also presented in this paper. Experiments are carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed parallel force and position control method applied to the EHLS system. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society

The effect of robotic manipulator structural compliance on system stability and trajectory tracking performance and the compensation of this structural compliance has been the subject of a number of publications for the case of robotic manipulator noncontact task execution. The subject of this article is the examination of dynamics and stability issues of a robotic manipulator modeled with link structural flexibility during execution of a task that requires the robot tip to contact fixed rigid objects in the work environment. The dynamic behavior of a general n degree of freedom flexible link manipulator is investigated with a previously proposed nonlinear computed torque constrained motion control applied, computed based on the rigid link equations of motion. Through the use of techniques from the theory of singular perturbations, the analysis of the system stability is investigated by examining the stability of the “slow” and “fast” subsystem dynamics. The conditions under which the fast subsystem dynamics exhibit a stable response are examined. It is shown that if certain conditions are satisfied a control based on only the rigid link equations of motion will lead to asymptotic trajectory tracking of the desired generalized position and force trajectories during constrained motion. Experiments reported here have been carried out to investigate the performance of the nonlinear computed torque control law during constrained motion of the manipulator. While based only on the rigid link equations of motion, experimental results confirm that high‐frequency structural link modes, exhibited in the response of the robot, are asymptotically stable and do not destabilize the slow subsystem dynamics, leading to asymptotic trajectory tracking of the overall system. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Constrained variational approach for dynamic analysis of elastic contact problems

We consider the problem of stabilization with respect to a prescribed position for the translational motion of a rigid body with interior material points connected with each other and with the exterior body by linear viscoelastic constraints. The motion occurs under the action of a constant exterior perturbation and a bang-bang control force that are directed along the line of motion. We assume that the bang-bang force control channel has a fixed delay, so that arbitrarily frequent switchings are impossible. We suggest a positional control ensuring the solution of this problem. We estimate the amplitude of the rigid body vibrations about the center of mass of the entire structure and the accuracy of stabilization of the prescribed position of the rigid body depending on the mechanical characteristics of the system and the control force magnitude. We also consider the problem of maximizing the stabilization accuracy depending on the control parameters. By way of example, we consider the controlled motion of a two-mass oscillatory system. This work is closely related to [1–3] and continues the studies of the guaranteed optimal bang-bang controllers with delay in the control channel [4–9]. The dynamics of a rigid body with elastic and dissipative elements was studied in [10] under the assumption that the period of natural vibrations and their decay time are small compared with the characteristic time of motion.

Tactile sensors are key components for a robot hand system, which are usually used to obtain the object’s features. The use of tactile sensors to obtain information from the objects is an open topic of research. In this paper, a new strategy for in-hand extraction of object’s properties and for control of the interaction forces with robot fingers, mainly based on tactile data, is presented. The scope of this strategy is to grasp and manipulate solid objects, including rigid and soft bodies. Assuming that the hand is in an initial configuration in which the object is grasped, the properties’ extraction approach is executed. After the extraction of properties is finished, the object can be classified in regard to a general body listing: rigid body, soft elastic body, or soft plastic object. Once the object is classified, for in-hand manipulation tasks, the contact points between the object grasped and the fingers are maintained using the information given by the tactile sensors in order to perform manipulation tasks. Each task is defined by a sequence of basic actions, in which the contact points and applied forces are adapted depending on the action to be performed and the estimated features for the object. The presented approach tries to imitate the behavior of human beings, in which the applied forces by the fingers are changed when the human estimates the rigidity of a body and when the fingers react to unexpected movements of the object to keep the contact points.

Previous studies on adaptation of fingertip forces to local friction at individual digit-object interfaces largely focused on static phases of manipulative tasks in which humans could rely on anticipatory control based on the friction in previous trials. Here we instead analyze mechanisms underlying this adaptation after unpredictable changes in local friction between consecutive trials. With the tips of the right index and middle fingers or the right and left index fingers, subjects restrained a manipulandum whose horizontal contact surfaces were located side by side. At unpredictable moments a tangential force was applied to the contact surfaces in the distal direction at 16 N/s to a plateau at 4 N. The subjects were free to use any combination of normal and tangential forces at the two fingers, but the sum of the tangential forces had to counterbalance the imposed load. The contact surface of the right index finger was fine-grained sandpaper, whereas that of the cooperating finger was changed between sandpaper and the more slippery rayon. The load increase automatically triggered normal force responses at both fingers. When a finger contacted rayon, subjects allowed slips to occur at this finger during the load force increase instead of elevating the normal force. These slips accounted for a partitioning of the load force between the digits that resulted in an adequate adjustment of the normal:tangential force ratios to the local friction at each digit. This mechanism required a fine control of the normal forces. Although the normal force at the more slippery surface had to be comparatively low to allow slippage, the normal forces applied by the nonslipping digit at the same time had to be high enough to prevent loss of the manipulandum. The frictional changes influenced the normal forces applied before the load ramp as well as the size of the triggered normal force responses similarly at both fingers, that is, with rayon at one contact surface the normal forces increased at both fingers. Thus to independently adapt fingertip forces to the local friction the normal forces were controlled at an interdigital level by using sensory information from both engaged digits. Furthermore, subjects used both short- and long-term anticipatory mechanisms in a manner consistent with the notion that the central nervous system (CNS) entertains internal models of relevant object and task properties during manipulation.

This paper presents a position-based force control scheme for human-to-robot object handover. The development of a framework for the robotic behavioural control strategy was initially based on the understanding dynamically and kinematically on an equivalent human-human object handover task. A real-world object handover task has been carried out to develop the conceptual guideline for a human-like behaviour-based robot. The control approach provides feasible and reliable solution for performing contact tasks between the human and robot. The control scheme is made up of an outer force control loop and an internal position-based control loop. Additionally, proportional plus integral (PI) and fuzzy logic control (FLC) algorithms were adopted to the compliance control the robot end effector’s position and interactive force in real-time. The quantitative measurements of the controlled robot performance based on PI ad FLC can be considered acceptable for human-to-robot object handover since the robot can receive the object from the human in a safe, reliable and timely manner.

In this paper we consider to merge the stability problem for bilateral teleoperators and the contact force control problem for manipulators during constrained motion, tackling them jointly. In particular we evaluate the effects of the presence of a slave local force loop in a force reflecting master slave equipment with time delay in the communication channels. The study keeps into account the digital synthesis of the controller, which usually represents the most critical and undervalued aspect of the problem. Simulative and experimental results are given, in particular showing that the local integral force control can be tuned to the delay in the communication channel in order to guarantee stability, and, up to certain extent, a favourable transient behaviour.