Sharif Digital Repository

The design of a new cable-driven robot for large-scale manipulation is presented with focus on the tension condition in the cables. In this robot, the arrangement of the cables is such that the moving platform has three translational motions. The robot has potentials for large-scale robotic manipulations, machining of large parts and material handling. The design analysis presented here is towards the synthesis of the robot as well as the sizing of the actuators and cables. The synthesis of this robot is dependent on the results of the tensionable workspace analysis previously published by the Alikhani et al. [6]. The analysis of the cable forces is presented in detail, which is then used to... 

A robotic manipulator is modelled as a cantilever rotating Euler-Bernoulli beam. Two dynamic transfer functions are derived to describe beam tip motion and angular rotation in terms of the desired angular rotation. Torque disturbance, imprecision in the payload mass, unknown properties of the manipulator link are sources of uncertainty. The objective is to achieve a desired angular rotation while the vibration of manipulator tip is suppressed. The control input of the system is an external driving torque. The -synthesis control approach is used and an H optimal robust controller is developed based on the DK-iteration algorithm. Results show that the designed controller guarantees the robust... 

In this paper, a robotic manipulator modelled as a cantilever rotating Euler-Bernoulli beam is considered. Control objective is achieving a desired angular rotation of the manipulator tip while its lateral vibration is suppressed. An external driving torque is the control input of the system. Two dynamic transfer functions are derived to describe beam tip motion and angular rotation in terms of the desired angular rotation. After state-space representation of the problem, an observer is designed to estimate state variables of the system. Then, a feedback control is designed for both regulation and tracking objectives. Eigenvalues are chosen such that an appropriate response is achieved while... 

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to fault detection and isolation for robot manipulators. Our technique is based on using a new simplified Euler-Lagrange (EL) equation that reduces complexity of the proposed fault detection method. The proposed approach isolates the faults and is capable of handling the uncertainty in manipulator gravity vector. It is shown that the effect of uncalibrated torque sensor measurement is asymptotically rejected in the detection process. A simulation example is presented to illustrate the results. © 2009 IEEE  

In most approaches to adaptive robust control design for manipulators, a constant upper bound is considered for unmodeled dynamics. However, experiments show that the nature of the control input affects the magnitude of the unmodeled dynamics. For example, in an almost rigid manipulator where the mechanical flexibilities are considered as unmodeled dynamics, high frequency components of the input torque which are resulted form non-smooth control laws, can themselves excite system flexibilities. In this paper, we consider different characterizations of the unmodeled dynamics to take into account the effect of control input signal on the unmodeled dynamics. Simulation results illustrate the... 

In the past few years, parallel manipulators have become increasingly popular in industry, especially, in the field of machine tools. Hexaglide is a 6 DOF parallel manipulator that can be used as a high speed milling machine. In this paper, the kinematics and singularity of Hexaglide parallel manipulator are studied systematically. At first, this robot has been modeled and its inverse and forward kinematic problems have been solved. Then, formulas for solving inverse velocity are derived and Jacobian matrix is obtained. After that, three different types of singularity for this type of robot have been investigated. Finally a numerical example is presented. Copyright © 2008 by ASME  

Reliability of model-based failure detection and isolation (FDI) methods depends on the amount of uncertainty in a system model. Recently, it has been shown that the use of joint torque sensing results in a simplified manipulator model that excludes hardly identifiable link dynamics and other nonlinearities. We present a geometric approach to fault detection and isolation (FDI) for robotic manipulators using joint torque sensor in presence of model uncertainty. A systematic procedure is introduced for representing a robotic system model using joint torque sensor being affine with respect to faults and disturbances. The proposed FDI filter has smooth dynamics with freely selectable functions... 

In this paper, a mobile manipulator is developed and studied in order to manipulate the complicated objects and navigate in an indoor environment. The arm consists of an actuator that makes the first linkage to move in two degrees of freedom in the first step of the task. In the next mode of the task, another actuator causes the second linkage to move in the third degree of freedom. In addition, the arm contains a gripper that grabs a variety of objects such as a screw. Therefore, the robotic arm can manipulate objects, and the mobile robot connected to the arm can detect, classify and track targets in its surrounding. Results carried out that the manufactured robot is able to manipulate and... 

This paper introduces a class of time-varying controllers for Euler-Lagrange systems such that the convergence occurs at an arbitrary finite time, independently of initial conditions, and free of chattering. The proposed controller is based on a mapping technique and is designed in two steps: First, a conventional (obstacle avoidance) asymptotically stable controller is specified for the nominal system; then, by a simple substitution, a prescribed-time (obstacle avoidance) controller is achievable for the perturbed system. It is proved that the proposed scheme is uniformly prescribed-time stable for unperturbed systems and prescribed-time attractive for perturbed systems as it rejects... 

In this paper, a nonlinear adaptive impedance controller is proposed for UAVs equipped with a robot manipulator that interacts with environment. In this adaptive controller, by considering the nonlinear dynamics model of the UAV plus the robot manipulator in Cartesian coordinates, all of model parameters are considered to be completely uncertain and their estimation is updated using an adaptation law. The objective of the proposed adaptive controller is the control of manipulator's end-effector impedance in Cartesian coordinates to have a stable physical interaction. The adjustable Cartesian impedance is a desired dynamical relationship between the end-effector motion in Cartesian... 

A new nonlinear model reference adaptive impedance controller is presented for the control of robot manipulators with uncertainties in model parameters such as friction coefficients. This method provides asymptotic tracking of a reference impedance model for the robot end-effector in operational space which is more sensible for the patient compared to the joint space impedance used in previous works. The model uncertainties such as friction coefficients are compensated using an adaptation law. The asymptotic tracking of the reference impedance model is shown using a Lyapunov function. The tracking performance and friction compensation are also demonstrated through simulation on a... 

In this paper, a decentralized controller for trajectory tracking of modular and reconfigurable robot manipulators is developed. The proposed control scheme uses joint-torque sensory feedback; also sliding mode control is employed to make both position and velocity tracking errors of robot manipulators globally converging to zero. Proposed scheme also guarantees that all signals in closed-loop systems will be bounded. In contrast to some of prior works in this scheme, each controller uses a smooth law to achieve its purposes. In this method, each controller uses only local information for producing control law hence separated controller can be used to control each module of manipulator and... 

In this paper, a new nonlinear robust adaptive impedance controller is addressed for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a robot manipulator that physically interacts with environment. A UAV equipped with a robot manipulator is a novel system that can perform different tasks instead of human being in dangerous and/or inaccessible environments. The objective of the proposed robust adaptive controller is control of the UAV and its robotic manipulators end-effector impedance in Cartesian space in order to have a stable physical interaction with environment. The proposed controller is robust against parametric uncertainties in the nonlinear dynamics model of the UAV and the robot... 

This study presents a method for global estimation of joint velocities in robotic manipulators. The authors consider a non-minimal model of a robotic manipulator and design an adaptive observer capable of handling uncertainties in robot dynamics. Smoothness of the dynamics of the proposed observer allows its easy implementation in comparison with non-smooth observers. Dimension of the proposed observer is shown to be at least 3n where n stands for the manipulator's degrees of freedom. This number is less than the dimension of most existing globally convergent adaptive observers. Global asymptotic convergence of state estimates to their true values is achieved under no persistency of... 

Ignoring actuator dynamics in control of rigid manipulators can in practice result in performance degradation or loss of system stability. However, consideration of actuator dynamics usually requires measurement of robot joint torques. This paper addresses motion tracking control of an n-DOF rigid robot by taking into account its actuator dynamics. Joint torque measurement is avoided by using an adaptive observer. The backstepping technique is adopted to develop a dynamically smooth adaptive nonlinear controller dealing with uncertainties in manipulator and actuator dynamics. Semi-global convergence of motion tracking errors as well as torque estimation error are proven without any... 

Time-delay in sensor measurements can be a frequent cause of instability and performance degradation in a robotic system. In this paper, motion tracking of rigid manipulators in presence of constant and known delay in sensors is investigated. By using non-minimal model of a manipulator, a dynamically smooth controller based on the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) approach is proposed which guarantees asymptotic tracking of desired joint angles and velocities in presence of delayed measurements. For a given controller the maximum amount of delay that preserves system stability is computed by solving an LMI optimization and also by numerical simulations, and the results are compared. Finally, a... 

In this paper, a new fuzzy based Model Coordination (F-MC) strategy is proposed for hierarchical control of large-scale systems (LSS). To solve the overall problem with a two-level optimal control strategy, we first decompose the system into several sub-systems at the first level. Then, at the second level, a fuzzy coordinator will be used to predict the interaction between subsystems. The proposed fuzzy based coordination approach is applicable to all types of LSS. Although in this paper, an optimal control of a 2DOF robot manipulator, as a LSS, will be considered. The obtained results are compared with the centralized optimization  

The position accuracy of the robot end-effector is inherently affected by uncertainties. In order to design and manufacture robots with high accuracy, it is essential to know the effects of these uncertainties on the motion of robots. Uncertainty analysis is a useful method which can estimate deviations from desired path in robots caused by uncertainties. This paper presents an applied formulation for 3D statistical error analysis of open-loop mechanisms and robotic manipulators. In order to have an accurate analysis, uncertainty effects of both the link dimension deviation and the joint clearance in performance of the spatial open-loop mechanisms and the robots are considered. The maximum... 

The Dual-Arm Cam-Lock (DACL) robot manipulators are reconfigurable arms formed by two parallel cooperative manipulators. Some of their joints may lock into each other. Therefore, the arms normally operate redundantly. However, when higher structural stiffness is needed these two arms can lock into each other in specific joints and loose some degrees of freedom. In this paper, the dynamics of the DACL robot is discussed and parametrically formulated. On the other hand, the criteria and implementation of genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the configuration of DACL robot manipulators at a specific point with the objective to maximize the cooperatively applicable task-space force in a desired...