Flexible Arm Manipulator Control for Industrial Tasks

Authors: Mircea Ivanescu, Nirvana Popescu, Decebal Popescu, Dorin Popescu

Abstract:

This paper addresses the control problem of a class of hyper-redundant arms. In order to avoid discrepancy between the mathematical model and the actual dynamics, the dynamic model with uncertain parameters of this class of manipulators is inferred. A procedure to design a feedback controller which stabilizes the uncertain system has been proposed. A PD boundary control algorithm is used in order to control the desired position of the manipulator. This controller is easy to implement from the point of view of measuring techniques and actuation. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the presented methods. In order to verify the suitability of the control algorithm, a platform with a 3D flexible manipulator has been employed for testing. Experimental tests on this platform illustrate the applications of the techniques developed in the paper.

Keywords: Distributed model, flexible manipulator, observer, robot control.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1124035

References:

[1] G. Robinson and J.B.C. Davies, “Continuum Robots – A state of the art”, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Detroit, May 1999, pp. 2849 – 2854.
[2] Gravagne, Ian A., Walker, Ian D., On the kinematics of remotely - actuated continuum robots, Proc. 2000 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, San Francisco, April 2000, pp. 2544-2550.
[3] Gravagne, Ian A., Walker, Ian D., Uniform Regulation of a Multi-Section Continuum Manipulators, Proc. 2002 IEEE Int. Conf. on Rob. and Aut., Washington DC, May 2002, pp. 1519-1525.
[4] Chirikjian, G. S., Burdick, J. W., An obstacle avoidance algorithm for hyper-redundant manipulators, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 1990, pp. 625 – 631.
[5] G. S. Chirikjian, ``Hyper-Redundant Manipulator Dynamics: A Continuum Approximation, Advanced Robotics, Vol. 9, No.3,1995, pp.217-243.
[6] H. Mochiyama, H., Kobayashi, H., The shape Jacobian of a manipulator with hyper degrees of freedom, Proc. 1999 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Detroit, May 1999, pp. 2837- 2842.
[7] D. Braganza, D.M. Dawson, I.D. Walker, N. Nath, “A neural network controller for continuum robots”, IEEE Transaction Robotics, vol. 23, issue 6, Dec. 2007, pp. 1270 – 1277.
[8] I. Walker, M. Hannan, “A novel elephant’s trunk robot”, AIM ’99, pp. 410 – 415.
[9] B. Jones, I.D. Walker, “Practical kinematics for real-time implementation of continuum robots”, IEEE Trans. Robotics, vol. 22, no. 6, Dec. 2006, pp. 1087 – 1099.
[10] A. Kapadia, I. Walker, D. Dawson, “A model – based sliding mode controller for extensible continuum robots”, Recent Advances in Signal Processing, Robotics and Automation, ISPRA Conf., 2009, pp. 103 – 120.
[11] D.C. Rucker, Webster, R.J. III, Chirikjian, G.S., Cowan, N.J., ``Equilibrium Conformations of Concentric-Tube Continuum Robots,'' International Journal of Robotics Research, vol. 29 no. 10, 1263-1280, 2010.
[12] I. Gravagne, I.D. Walker, Manipulability and Force Ellipsoids for Continuum Robot Manipulators,2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Maui, Hawaii, Oct 29-31, pp 304-310.
[13] M. Ivanescu, N. Popescu, D. Popescu, A Decoupled Sliding Mode Control for a Continuum Arm, Advanced Robotics, 2015, Taylor & Francis, doi:10.1080/01691864.2015.1035323.
[14] Popescu, N., Popescu, D., Ivanescu, M., A Spatial Weight Error Control for a Class of Hyper-Redundant Robots, IEEE Trans on Robotics, ISSN 1552-3098, August 2013, vol 29, No 4, pp 1043-1050.
[15] M. Ivanescu, M. Nitulescu, The Curvature Control for Hyper-redundant Robot, Int.Symp of Robotics, ISR 2014, Munich, Germany, pp 424-410.
[16] Y. Orlov, A. Pissano, E. Usai, Exponential Stabilization of the Uncertain Wave Equation via Distributed Dynamic Input Extension, IEEE Trans. Aut >Control, vol 56, No1, pp212-218.
[17] M. Ivanescu, A Variable Structure Controller for a Class of Hyper-redundant Arms, ICINCO 2013 - International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, Vienne, 28-30 Aug 2014, pp 1006-1012.
[18] R. Schilling, Fundamental of Robotics, Prentice Hall,1990.