Practical Tracking Control Under Actuator Saturation for a Class of Flexible-Joint Robotic Manipulators Driven by DC Motors

This paper is devoted to the practical tracking control for a class of flexible-joint robotic manipulators driven by DC motors. Different from the related literature where control constraint is neglected and the disturbances are excluded or only exist in one subsystem, actuator saturation is considered in this paper while the disturbances are present in all the three subsystems. This leads to the incapability of the traditional schemes on this topic. For this, a novel control design scheme is proposed by skillfully incorporating adaptive dynamic compensation technique, constructive methods of command filters and an auxiliary system for the actuator saturation into the backstepping framework, and in turn to design a practical tracking controller which ensures that all the states of the resulting closed-loop system are bounded and the system output practically tracks the reference signal. It is worthwhile strengthening that a more wider class of reference signals can be tracked since they are only first order continuously differentiable but twice or more in the related literature. Finally, a numerical example is provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.

Event-triggered formation control of n-link networked stochastic robotic manipulators

This article proposes an event-triggered control framework to satisfy the tracking formation performance for a group of uncertain non-linear n-link robotic manipulators. The robotic manipulators are configured as a multi-agent system and they communicate over a directed graph (digraph). Furthermore, the non-linear robotic manipulator-multi-agent systems are subject to stochastic environmental loads. By introducing extra virtual controllers in the final step of the backstepping design, a total number of n event-triggering mechanisms are introduced independently for each link of all the robotic manipulator agents to update the control inputs in a fully distributed manner. More precisely, the actuator of each link of a particular agent is capable of being updated independent of other link actuator updates. A rigorous proof of the convergence of all the closed-loop signals in probability is then given and the Zeno phenomenon is excluded for the control event-triggered architectures. The simulation experiments finally quantify the effectiveness of proposed approach in terms of reducing the number of control updates and handling the stochastic environmental loads.

Agricultural harvesting using integrated robot system

In today's competitive world, robot designs are developed to simplify and improve quality wherever necessary. The rise in technology and modernization has led people from the unskilled sector to shift to the skilled sector. The agricultural sector's solution for harvesting fruits and vegetables is manual labor and a few other agro bots that are expensive and have various limitations when it comes to harvesting. Although robots present may achieve harvesting, the affordability of such designs may not be possible by small and medium-scale producers. The integrated robot system is designed to solve this problem, and when compared with the existing manual methods, this seems to be the most cost-effective, efficient, and viable solution. The robot uses deep learning for image detection, and the object is acquired using robotic manipulators. The robot uses a Cartesian and articulated configuration to perform the picking action. In the end, the robot is operated where carrots and cantaloupes were harvested. The data of the harvested crops are used to arrive at the conclusion of the robot's accuracy.

Metaheuristic Optimization of PD and PID Controllers for Robotic Manipulators

In this paper, the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) is combined with Proportional-Derivative (PD) and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) to design more efficient PD and PID controllers for robotic manipulators. PSO is used to optimize the controller parameters Kp (proportional gain), Ki (integral gain) and Kd (derivative gain) to achieve better performances. The proposed algorithm is performed in two steps: (1) First, PD and PID parameters are offline optimized by the PSO algorithm. (2) Second, the obtained optimal parameters are fed in the online control loop. Stability of the proposed scheme is established using Lyapunov stability theorem, where we guarantee the global stability of the resulting closed-loop system, in the sense that all signals involved are uniformly bounded. Computer simulations of a two-link robotic manipulator have been performed to study the efficiency of the proposed method. Simulations and comparisons with genetic algorithms show that the results are very encouraging and achieve good performances.

An Active Fault-Tolerant Control for Robotic Manipulators Using Adaptive Non-Singular Fast Terminal Sliding Mode Control and Disturbance Observer

In this study, a fault-tolerant control (FTC) tactic using a sliding mode controller–observer method for uncertain and faulty robotic manipulators is proposed. First, a finite-time disturbance observer (DO) is proposed based on the sliding mode observer to approximate the lumped uncertainties and faults (LUaF). The observer offers high precision, quick convergence, low chattering, and finite-time convergence estimating information. Then, the estimated signal is employed to construct an adaptive non-singular fast terminal sliding mode control law, in which an adaptive law is employed to approximate the switching gain. This estimation helps the controller automatically adapt to the LUaF. Consequently, the combination of the proposed controller–observer approach delivers better qualities such as increased position tracking accuracy, reducing chattering effect, providing finite-time convergence, and robustness against the effect of the LUaF. The Lyapunov theory is employed to illustrate the robotic system’s stability and finite-time convergence. Finally, simulations using a 2-DOF serial robotic manipulator verify the efficacy of the proposed method.

ROS-based Toolbox for Motor Parameter Identification of Robotic Manipulators

For many applications, a precise knowledge of the model of the robot is necessary for accurate and stable control. However, it is not always feasible or desirable to perform from scratch an in-depth study of the robot model, especially if it is not an element of concern for the respective application. In this article we present a methodology for identifying motor parameters of a robotic manipulator. We discuss the mathematical model and introduce an extensible toolbox with velocity-control based methodology for a fast identification of individual motor parameters. The results show that we can identify individual parameters even for joints that are commercialised as of the same type.