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Robust and Safe Coordination of Multiple Robotic Manipulators

An Approach Using Modified Avoidance Functions

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Abstract

This paper develops a strategy for collision avoidance among a system of robotic manipulators by using joint feedback controllers in the joint space, which have a closed form. The joint positions are directly used in computing the joint torques, without any additional intermediate steps for computing shortest distances or gradients of shortest distances between the links. Furthermore the collision avoidance controller can be augmented to any stable controller with different objectives, such as position tracking, velocity consensus etc. We consider set point stabilization as a control objective in this paper, and a Lyapunov based analysis is used to show convergence of the joints to their desired positions while guaranteeing collision avoidance among the links of the manipulators and avoiding deadlocks (unwanted local minima). The proposed control methodology is illustrated using some simulation and experimental results.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Numbers CNS 13-14891 and CNS 15-45069, and a grant through the JUMP-ARCHES (Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation) program for addressing safety and reliability of surgical robots. This project was carried out at the Health Care Engineering Systems Center at Illinois.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechanical Science and Engineering Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, W. Green St., Urbana, IL, 1206, USA

    Shankar A. Deka & Xiao Li

  2. Coordinated Science Lab, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1308 W Main St, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Dušan M. Stipanović

  3. Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 104 S. Mathews Ave., W. Green St., Urbana, IL, 61801-30801206, USA

    Thenkurussi Kesavadas

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  1. Shankar A. Deka
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  2. Xiao Li
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  3. Dušan M. Stipanović
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  4. Thenkurussi Kesavadas
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Correspondence to Shankar A. Deka.

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Deka, S.A., Li, X., Stipanović, D.M. et al. Robust and Safe Coordination of Multiple Robotic Manipulators. J Intell Robot Syst 90, 419–435 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0699-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0699-y

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