Decentralised adaptive control of cooperating Robotic manipulators with disturbance observers

Abstract

In this study, the authors present decentralised adaptive controllers for two cooperating robotic manipulators moving an object with constrained trajectory/force in the presence of dynamics uncertainties and external disturbances. The cooperating manipulators are described as an aggregation of subsystems. For control design, first a decentralised local dynamics coupled with physical interactions between subsystems is developed, and then a decentralised adaptive control merging parameter adaptation and disturbance observer is constructed, such that motion and force trajectories converge to the desired manifolds and the effect of non-parametrisable uncertainties is compensated by the disturbance observer. Experiment studies are carried out to show the efficiency of the control design. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014.