This paper describes the control system design concepts for the Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor (MVACS) Robotic Arm which supports the scientiic investigations to be conducted as part of the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander project. Solutions are presented to some of the problems encountered in this demanding space application with its tight constraints on mass, power, volume, and computing resourc...

We present a control architecture for fast quadruped locomotion over rough terrain. We approach the problem by decomposing it into many sub-systems, in which we apply state-of-the-art learning, planning, optimization, and control techniques to achieve robust, fast locomotion. Unique features of our control strategy include: (1) a system that learns optimal foothold choices from expert demonstra...

A computational model using mechanical impedance control in combination with an iterative model reference adaptive control is proposed to capture the hypothesised mechanisms in human motor control and the learning capacity that humans exhibit in adapting their movements to new and unstructured environments. The model uses an iterative learning control law to model human learning through repetit...

Trust region method for a class of large-scale minimization problems, the unconstrained discrete-time optimal control (DTOC) problems, is considered. Although the trust region algorithms developed in 4] and 13] are very economical they lack the ability to handle the so-called hard case. In this paper, We show that the trust region subproblem can be solved within an acceptable accuracy without f...

The cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) (Albus 1975) is applied for learning the inverse dynamics of a simulated two joint, planar arm. The actuators were antagonistic muscles, which acted as feedback controllers for each joint. We use this example to demonstrate some limitations of the control paradigm used in earlier applications of the CMAC (e.g., Miller et al. 1987, 1990): the C...

This paper introduces the concept of hybrid operational space control, a method that unifies kinematic tracking of individual joints with an inverse dynamics task space controller for the remainder of the robot. The proposed control strategy allows for a hierarchical task decomposition while simultaneously regulating the inner forces between the contact points. At the same time it improves fast...

In this article it is shown how tool vibrations of elastic joint robots can be reduced significantly by feedforward control based on inverse dynamics models. The key ideas are (a) to use available algorithms for differential-algebraic equation systems to derive inverse plant models automatically and reliably, (b) to automatically construct the high-order differentiability of the inverse plant m...

The article proposes a novel approach to path following in the presence of obstacles with unique characteristics. First, the approach proposes an integrated method for obstacle avoidance and path following based on a single feedback control law, which produces commands to actuators directly executable by a robot with unicycle kinematics. Second, the approach offers a new solution to the well–kn...

This paper presents a new approach to controlling a robot from video-feedback. In contrast to classical approaches, the entire system is modeled by means of projective geometry. For the robot’s geometry in particular, we introduce a new formalism “projective kinematics”. As a result, motions in jointand imagespace can be related without metric calibration, and a corresponding visual control law...

An adaptive control scheme for mechanical manipulators is proposed. The control loop essentially consists of a network for learning the robot’s inverse dynamics and on-line generating the control signal. Some simulation results are provided to evaluate the design. A supervisor is used to improve the performances of the system during the adaptation transients. The supervisor exerts two superviso...