Distributed Model Predictive Contouring Control for Real-Time Multi-Robot Motion Planning

Existing motion planning algorithms for multi-robot systems must be improved to address poor coordination and increase low real-time performance.This paper proposes a new distributed real-time motion planning method for a multi-robot system using Model Predictive Contouring Control(MPCC).MPCC allows separating the tracking accuracy and productivity,to improve productivity better than the traditional Model Predictive Control(MPC)which follows a time-dependent reference.In the proposed distributed MPCC,each robot exchanges the predicted paths of the other robots and generates the collision-free motion in a parallel manner.The proposed distributed MPCC method is tested in industrial operation scenarios in the robot simulation platform Gazebo.The simulation results show that the proposed distributed MPCC method realizes real-time multi-robot motion planning and performs better than three commonly-used planning methods(dynamic window approach,MPC,and prioritized planning).

Nanometer-Order Contouring Control in a Feed Drive System Using Linear Ball Guides by Applying a Combination of Modified Disturbance Observer and Repetitive Control

This paper proposes a quadrant glitch compensation method to achieve nanometer-level accuracy of contouring control for a feed drive system using linear ball guides.The proposed method is a combination of a modified disturbance observer(“disturbance suppressor”)and an improved repetitive control scheme.Sinusoidal motion tests with 1 mm amplitude and 0.1 Hz driving frequency were conducted using a single-axis feed drive system to verify the quadrant glitch compensation ability of this method.First,the repeatability of the quadrant glitches in the experimental system was verified,which is the most important characteristic required for compensation via repetitive control.Then,by applying the combination of disturbance suppressor and conventional repetitive control,the amplitudes of the quadrant glitches were decreased to less than 1 nm;in other words,the ratio of the magnitude of the quadrant glitch to the amplitude of the position reference was less than 1/1,000,000.However,for both compensation schemes mentioned before,vibrations were generated when the feed speed increased.Moreover,the amplitudes increased with the number of repetitions.The reason for the vibrations was identified as the repetitive control mechanism.To suppress these vibrations,the repetitive control was applied only to narrowed regimes near the quadrant glitches.Thus,the maximum contouring error was decreased to 2 nm.In addition,the nonlinear spring behavior of the linear ball guides was confirmed to affect the stability of the control systems.

Robust immersion and invariance adaptive coordinated control for a class of biaxial gantry systems

This paper proposes a robust Immersion and Invariance(I&I)adaptive coordinated controller for a class of uncertain linear-motor-driven biaxial gantry system subject to external disturbances for high-accuracy contour tracking.Firstly,the dynamic model of the gantry system is transformed into task coordinate frame,through which the contour tracking can be regarded as a regulation problem.Based on the transformed system dynamics,an I&I-based adaptation law with smooth projection is proposed to estimate the unknown parameters.Different from traditional adaptive control,the proposed robust I&I adaptive control introduces a new term called tuning function in adaptation law to shape the dynamic behaviour of the estimation vector.Then the stability of the closed-loop system is proved by Lyapunov theory.Finally,comparative experiments are executed on an industrial biaxial gantry system with two different cases to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control law.

Modeling the control mechanism for generating the rise-fall patterns in FO contours

The strategy of modeling the control mechanism for generating F0 contour of speech signal is studied in this paper. Based on some dynamic characteristics of vocal cord strain, the complex laryngeal mechanism relative to local F0 regulation is simplified to be a feasible physical model. Furthermore, a model function is deduced as the control mechanism for the generation process of local rise-fall patterns, and two kinds of basic feature patterns result with so called rise-fall commands defined by model parameters. on the logarithmic scale of F0 versus time the local characteristics of an F0 contour are approximated by the sum of these patterns generated by appropriate commands. The experimenial results in analyzing and synthesizing the F0 contours of spoken Chinese utterances indicate that the observed F0 contours can be always approximated well by the model, and a good correlation exists between some model parameters and the transition duration of local F0 rising or falling. The model lays a foundation for Chinese F0 contour synthesis by rule.