Finite-time tracking control and vibration suppression based on the concept of virtual control force for flexible two-link space robot

The dynamic modeling, finite-time trajectory tracking control and vibration suppression of a flexible two-link space robot are studied. Firstly, the dynamic model of the system is established by combining Lagrange method with assumed mode method. In order to ensure that the base attitude and the joints of space robot can reach the desired positions within a limited time, a non-singular fast terminal sliding mode(NFTSM) controller is designed, which realizes the finite-time convergence of the trajectory tracking errors. Subsequently, for the sake of suppressing the vibrations of flexible links, a hybrid trajectory based on the concept of the virtual control force is developed, which can reflect the flexible modes and the trajectory tracking errors simultaneously. By modifying the original control scheme, a NFTSM hybrid controller is proposed. The hybrid control scheme can not only realized attitude stabilization and trajectory tracking of joints in finite time, but also provide a new method of vibration suppression. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the designed hybrid control strategy.

Cross-section distortion and springback characteristics of double-cavity aluminum profile in force controlled stretch-bending

3D elastic-plastic FE model for simulating the force controlled stretch-bending process of double-cavity aluminum profile was established using hybrid explicit−implicit solvent method.Considering the computational accuracy and efficiency,the optimal choices of numerical parameters and algorithms in FE modelling were determined.The formation mechanisms of cross-section distortion and springback were revealed.The effects of pre-stretching,post-stretching,friction,and the addition of internal fillers on forming quality were investigated.The results show that the stress state of profile in stretch-bending is uniaxial with only a circumferential stress.The stress distribution along the length direction of profile is non-uniform and the maximum tensile stress is located at a certain distance away from the center of profile.As aluminum profile is gradually attached to bending die,the distribution characteristic of cross-section distortion along the length direction of profile changes from V-shape to W-shape.After unloading the forming tools,cross-section distortion decreases obviously due to the stress relaxation,with a maximum distortion difference of 13%before and after unloading.As pre-stretching and post-stretching forces increase,cross-section distortion increases gradually,while springback first decreases and then remains unchanged.With increasing friction between bending die and profile,cross-section distortion slightly decreases,while springback increases.Cross-section distortion decreases by 83%with adding PVC fillers into the cavities of profile,while springback increases by 192.2%.

Force Compensation Control for Electro-Hydraulic Servo System with Pump-Valve Compound Drive via QFT-DTOC

Each joint of a hydraulic-driven legged robot adopts a highly integrated hydraulic drive unit(HDU),which features a high power-weight ratio.However,most HDUs are throttling-valve-controlled cylinder systems,which exhibit high energy losses.By contrast,pump control systems offer a high efficiency.Nevertheless,their response ability is unsatisfactory.To fully utilize the advantages of pump and valve control systems,in this study,a new type of pump-valve compound drive system(PCDS)is designed,which can not only effectively reduce the energy loss,but can also ensure the response speed and response accuracy of the HDUs in robot joints to satisfy the performance requirements of robots.Herein,considering the force control requirements of energy conservation,high precision,and fast response of the robot joint HDU,a nonlinear mathematical model of the PCDS force control system is first introduced.In addition,pressure-flow nonlinearity,friction nonlinearity,load complexity and variability,and other factors affecting the system are considered,and a novel force control method based on quantitative feedback theory(QFT)and a disturbance torque observer(DTO)is designed,which is denoted as QFT-DTOC herein.This method improves the control accuracy and robustness of the force control system,reduces the effect of the disturbance torque on the control performance of the servo motor,and improves the overall force control performance of the system.Finally,experimental verification is performed using the PCDS performance test platform.The experimental results and quantitative data show that the QFT-DTOC proposed herein can significantly improve the force control performance of the PCDS.The relevant force control method can be used as a bottom-control method for the hydraulic servo system to provide a foundation for implementing the top-level trajectory planning of the robot.

FUZZY COORDINATION AND FORCE/POSITION CONTROL OF ROBOTIC MANIPULATOR

It is crucial for implementing force/position control of robotic manipulator under the constraint of unknown environment to determine the force control and the position control directions. This paper presents an on line algorithm to real timely estimate the tangent and the normal vectors of the constraint surface based on the measured contact force under the consideration of frictional force. A fuzzy synthesis policy is proposed to coordinate the conflict between the compliant force control and the stiff position control. An experimental study on an AdeptThree, a SCARA type robotic manipulator, is conducted. The experimental results show that the policy presented in the paper is effective.

Impedance force control for position controlled robotic manipulators under the constraint of unknown environments

A force control strategy for position controlled robotic manipulators is presented. On line force feedback data are employed to estimate the local shape of the unknown constraint. The estimated vectors are used to generate the virtual reference trajectory for the target impedance model that is driven by the force error to produce command position. By following the command position trajectory the robotic manipulator can follow the unknown constraint surface while keeping an acceptable force error in a manner depicted by the target impedance model. Computer simulation on a 3 linked planar manipulator and experimental studies on an Adept 3, an SCARA type robotic manipulator, are conducted to verify the force tracking capability of the proposed control strategy.

Simplified performance indices and active control force of vibration isolation systems with elastic base

Influence of the elasticity of the base on vibration isolation performances of single layer, double layer and floating raft vibration isolation systems is investigated systematically. Characteristics of vibration coupling between different vibration isolation systems and different elastic bases are analyzed. Moreover the characteristics of vibration acceleration level difference and force transmissibility of different vibration isolation systems are discussed and their simpli- fled expressions are given. In addition the required control forces of active vibration isolation under different installations of actuators for different vibration isolation systems are compared. The results show that for all vibration isolation systems, the addition of the stiffness and damping of the base can enhance their vibration acceleration level difference and force transmissibility. Moreover for floating raft vibration isolation system, the addition of the stiffness and damping of the raft can enhance its vibration isolation performance and reduce the control force required bv active vibration isolation.

Parameters Sensitivity Characteristics of Highly Integrated Valve-Controlled Cylinder Force Control System

Nowadays, a highly integrated valve?controlled cylinder(HIVC) is applied to drive the joints of legged robots. Although the adoption of HIVC has resulted in high?performance robot control, the hydraulic force system still has problems, such as strong nonlinearity, and time?varying parameters. This makes HIVC force control very diffcult and complex. How to improve the control performance of the HIVC force control system and find the influence rule of the system parameters on the control performance is very significant. Firstly, the mathematical model of HIVC force control system is established. Then the mathematical expression for parameter sensitivity matrix is obtained by applying matrix sensitivity analysis(PSM). Then, aimed at the sinusoidal response under(three factors and three levels) working conditions, the simulation and the experiment are conducted. While the error between the simulation and experiment can’t be avoided. Therefore, combined with the range analysis, the error in the two performance indexes of sinusoidal response under the whole working condition is analyzed. Besides, the sensitivity variation pattern for each system parameter under the whole working condition is figured out. Then the two sensitivity indexes for the three system parameters, which are supply pressure, proportional gain and initial displacement of piston, are proved experimentally. The proposed method significantly reveals the sensitivity characteristics of HIVC force control system, which can make the contribution to improve the control performance.

Optimal Design and Force Control of a Nine-Cable-Driven Parallel Mechanism for Lunar Takeoff Simulation

Traditional simulation methods are unable to meet the requirements of lunar takeo simulations, such as high force output precision, low cost, and repeated use. Considering that cable-driven parallel mechanisms have the advantages of high payload to weight ratio, potentially large workspace, and high-speed motion, these mechanisms have the potential to be used for lunar takeo simulations. Thus, this paper presents a parallel mechanism driven by nine cables. The purpose of this study is to optimize the dimensions of the cable-driven parallel mechanism to meet dynamic workspace requirements under cable tension constraints. The dynamic workspace requirements are derived from the kinematical function requests of the lunar takeo simulation equipment. Experimental design and response surface methods are adopted for building the surrogate mathematical model linking the optimal variables and the optimization indices. A set of dimensional parameters are determined by analyzing the surrogate mathematical model. The volume of the dynamic workspace increased by 46% after optimization. Besides, a force control method is proposed for calculating output vector and sinusoidal forces. A force control loop is introduced into the traditional position control loop to adjust the cable force precisely, while controlling the cable length. The e ectiveness of the proposed control method is verified through experiments. A 5% vector output accuracy and 12 Hz undulation force output can be realized. This paper proposes a cable-driven parallel mechanism which can be used for lunar takeo simulation.

Application of μ Theory in Compliant Force Control

The application of μ theory in compliant force control system is studied. A compliant force control strategy is developed based on the inner loop position control of 6-DOF parallel robot in order to simulate the push and pull process of forcible alignment in space docking, Considering uncertainties such as parameter perturbations, model perturbations and external disturbances, etc., a robust force controller is designed using μ synthesis theory. The robust stability and robust performance are compared by analysis between the designed robust force controller and the classical force controller. The experiment results of the designed robust force controller and the classical force controller are shown. The results indicate that the designed robust force controller is of efficiency and superiority.

Trajectory Tracking of a Planer Parallel Manipulator by Using Computed Force Control Method

Despite small workspace, parallel manipulators have some advantages over their serial counterparts in terms of higher speed, acceleration, rigidity, accuracy, manufacturing cost and payload. Accordingly, this type of manipulators can be used in many applications such as in high-speed machine tools, tuning machine for feeding, sensitive cutting, assembly and packaging. This paper presents a special type of planar parallel manipulator with three degrees of freedom. It is constructed as a variable geometry truss generally known planar Stewart platform. The reachable and orientation workspaces are obtained for this manipulator. The inverse kinematic analysis is solved for the trajectory tracking according to the redundancy and joint limit avoidance. Then, the dynamics model of the manipulator is established by using Virtual Work method. The simulations are performed to follow the given planar trajectories by using the dynamic equations of the variable geometry truss manipulator and computed force control method. In computed force control method, the feedback gain matrices for PD control are tuned with fixed matrices by trail end error and variable ones by means of optimization with genetic algorithm.

Improved hybrid position/force controller design of a flexible robot manipulator using a sliding observer

An improved hybrid position/force controller design of a flexible robot manipulator is presented using a sliding observer. The friction between the end effector and the environment is considered and compensated. For systematic reasons the controller is designed taking into consideration the rigid link subsystems and the flexible joints. The proposed control system satisfies the stability of the two subsystems and copes with the uncertainty of robot dynamics. A sliding observer is designed to estimate the time derivative of the torque applied as input to the rigid part of the robot. For the stability of the observer, it is assumed that the uncertainty of the observed system is bounded. A MRAC algorithm is used for the estimation of the friction forces at the contact point between the end effector and the environment. Finally simulation and experimental results are given, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

A novel grasping force control strategy for multi-fingered prosthetic hand

A grasping force control strategy is proposed in order to complete various free manipulations by using anthropomorphic prosthetic hand. The position-based impedance control and force-tracking impedance control are used in free and constraint spaces, respectively. The fuzzy observer is adopted in transition in order to switch control mode. Two control modes use one position-based impedance controller. In order to achieve grasping force track, reference force is added to the impedance controller in the constraint space. Trajectory tracking in free space and torque tracking in constrained space are realized, and reliability of mode switch and stability of system are achieved. An adaptive sliding mode friction compensation method is proposed. This method makes use of terminal sliding mode idea to design sliding mode function, which makes the tracking error converge to zero in finite time and avoids the problem of conventional sliding surface that tracking error cannot converge to zero. Based on the characteristic of the exponential form friction, the sliding mode control law including the estimation of friction parameter is obtained through terminal sliding mode idea, and the online parameter update laws are obtained based on Lyapunov stability theorem. The experiments on the HIT Prosthetic Hand IV are carried out to evaluate the grasping force control strategy, and the experiment results verify the effectiveness of this control strategy.

Adaptive robust output force tracking control of pneumatic cylinder while maximizing/minimizing its stiffness

The system considered in this work consists of a cylinder which is controlled by a pair of three-way servo valves rather than a four-way one.Therefore,the cylinder output stiffness is independently controllable of the output force.A discontinuous projection based adaptive robust controller (ARC) was constructed to achieve high-accuracy output force trajectory tracking for the system.In ARC,on-line parameter adaptation method was adopted to reduce the extent of parametric uncertainties due to the variation of friction parameters,and sliding mode control method was utilized to attenuate the effects of parameter estimation errors,unmodelled dynamics and disturbance.Furthermore,output stiffness maximization/minimization was introduced to fulfill the requirement of many robotic applications.Extensive experimental results were presented to illustrate the effectiveness and the achievable performance of the proposed scheme.For tracking a 0.5 Hz sinusoidal trajectory,maximum tracking error is 4.1 N and average tracking error is 2.2 N.Meanwhile,the output stiffness can be made and maintained near its maximum/minimum.

Force Control Compensation Method with Variable Load Stiffness and Damping of the Hydraulic Drive Unit Force Control System

Each joint of hydraulic drive quadruped robot is driven by the hydraulic drive unit（HDU）, and the contacting between the robot foot end and the ground is complex and variable, which increases the difficulty of force control inevitably. In the recent years, although many scholars researched some control methods such as disturbance rejection control, parameter self-adaptive control, impedance control and so on, to improve the force control performance of HDU, the robustness of the force control still needs improving. Therefore, how to simulate the complex and variable load characteristics of the environment structure and how to ensure HDU having excellent force control performance with the complex and variable load characteristics are key issues to be solved in this paper. The force control system mathematic model of HDU is established by the mechanism modeling method, and the theoretical models of a novel force control compensation method and a load characteristics simulation method under different environment structures are derived, considering the dynamic characteristics of the load stiffness and the load damping under different environment structures. Then, simulation effects of the variable load stiffness and load damping under the step and sinusoidal load force are analyzed experimentally on the HDU force control performance test platform, which provides the foundation for the force control compensation experiment research. In addition, the optimized PID control parameters are designed to make the HDU have better force control performance with suitable load stiffness and load damping, under which the force control compensation method is introduced, and the robustness of the force control system with several constant load characteristics and the variable load characteristics respectively are comparatively analyzed by experiment. The research results indicate that if the load characteristics are known, the force control compensation method presented in this paper has positive compensation effects on the load characteristics variation, i.e., this method decreases the effects of the load characteristics variation on the force control performance and enhances the force control system robustness with the constant PID parameters, thereby, the online PID parameters tuning control method which is complex needs not be adopted. All the above research provides theoretical and experimental foundation for the force control method of the quadruped robot joints with high robustness.

Decentralized adaptive neural network sliding mode position/force control of constrained reconfigurable manipulators

A decentralized adaptive neural network sliding mode position/force control scheme is proposed for constrained reconfigurable manipulators. Different from the decentralized control strategy in multi-manipulator cooperation, the proposed decentralized position/force control scheme can be applied to series constrained reconfigurable manipulators. By multiplying each row of Jacobian matrix in the dynamics by contact force vector, the converted joint torque is obtained. Furthermore, using desired information of other joints instead of their actual values, the dynamics can be represented as a set of interconnected subsystems by model decomposition technique. An adaptive neural network controller is introduced to approximate the unknown dynamics of subsystem. The interconnection and the whole error term are removed by employing an adaptive sliding mode term. And then, the Lyapunov stability theory guarantees the stability of the closed-loop system. Finally, two reconfigurable manipulators with different configurations are employed to show the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized position/force control scheme.

Active Force with Fuzzy Logic Control of a Two-Link Arm Driven by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

In this paper, the practicality and feasibility of Active Force Control （AFC） integrated with Fuzzy Logic（AFCAFL） applied to a two link planar arm actuated by a pair of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle （PAM） is investigated. The study emphasizes on the application and control of PAM actuators which may be considered as the new generation of actuators comprising fluidic muscle that has high-tension force, high power to weight ratio and high strength in spite of its drawbacks in the form of high nonlinearity behaviour, high hysteresis and time varying parameters. Fuzzy Logic （FL） is used as a technique to estimate the best value of the inertia matrix of robot arm essential for the AFC mechanism that is complemented with a conventional Propor- tional-Integral-Derivative （PID） control at the outermost loop. A simulation study was first performed followed by an experi- mental investigation for validation. The experimental study was based on the independent joint tracking control and coordinated motion control of the arm in Cartesian or task space. In the former, the PAM actuated arm is commanded to track the prescribed trajectories due to harmonic excitations at the joints for a given frequency, whereas for the latter, two sets of trajectories with different loadings were considered. A practical rig utilizing a Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation （HILS） configuration was developed and a number of experiments were carried out. The results of the experiment and the simulation works were in good agreement, which verified the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed AFCAFL scheme actuated by PAM.

Compliant landing of a trotting quadruped robot based on hybrid motion/force robust control

A compliant landing strategy for a trotting quadruped robot on unknown rough terrains based on contact force control is presented. Firstly, in order to lower the disturbance caused by the landing impact force, a landing phase is added between the swing phase and the stance phase, where the desired contact force is set as a small positive constant. Secondly, the joint torque optimization of the stance legs is formulated as a quadratic programming(QP) problem subject to equality and inequality/bound constraints. And a primal-dual dynamical system solver based on linear variational inequalities(LVI) is applied to solve this QP problem. Furthermore, based on the optimization results, a hybrid motion/force robust controller is designed to realize the tracking of the contact force, while the constraints of the stance feet landing angles are fulfilled simultaneously. Finally, the experiments are performed to validate the proposed methods.

MODELING, VALIDATION AND OPTIMAL DESIGN OF THE CLAMPING FORCE CONTROL VALVE USED IN CONTINUOUSLY VARIABLE TRANSMISSION

Associated dynamic performance of the clamping force control valve used in continuously variable transmission （CVT） is optimized. Firstly, the structure and working principle of the valve are analyzed, and then a dynamic model is set up by means of mechanism analysis. For the purpose of checking the validity of the modeling method, a prototype workpiece of the valve is manufactured for comparison test, and its simulation result follows the experimental result quite well. An associated performance index is founded considering the response time, overshoot and saving energy, and five structural parameters are selected to adjust for deriving the optimal associated performance index. The optimization problem is solved by the genetic algorithm （GA） with necessary constraints. Finally, the properties of the optimized valve are compared with those of the prototype workpiece, and the results prove that the dynamic performance indexes of the optimized valve are much better than those of the prototype workpiece.

PI force feedback control for large flexible structure vibration with active tendons

Active tendon, consisting of a displacement actuator and a collocated force sensor, was first presented by Preumont and his co-workers to attenuate the vibration of large flexible space structures, and the control algorithm adopted by them was integral force feedback. This paper presents a new proportional-integral （PI） force feedback algorithm to achieve larger damping ratios for the structure without the requirement of structure model. Stability of the control system is shown, and simulations of a structure similar to JPL-MPI demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for vibration control of space structures.

Hybrid force control of astronaut rehabilitative training robot under active loading mode

In order to mitigate the effects of space adaptation syndrome(SAS) and improve the training efficiency of the astronauts, a novel astronaut rehabilitative training robot(ART) was proposed. ART can help the astronauts to carry out the bench press training in the microgravity environment. Firstly, a dynamic model of cable driven unit(CDU) was established whose accuracy was verified through the model identification. Secondly, to improve the accuracy and the speed of the active loading, an active loading hybrid force controller was proposed on the basis of the dynamic model of the CDU. Finally, the actual effect of the hybrid force controller was tested by simulations and experiments. The results suggest that the hybrid force controller can significantly improve the precision and the dynamic performance of the active loading with the maximum phase lag of the active loading being 9° and the maximum amplitude error being 2% at the frequency range of 10 Hz. The controller can meet the design requirements.