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Model-based Force Control of a Tendon-Sheath Actuated Slender Gripper Without Output Feedback

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Abstract

Slender robots have received a lot of attention in ruin rescue missions as they are flexible to detect narrow spaces. However, the ability to perform rescue operations is not satisfactory, which is greatly subject to the control performance of the end manipulators. Unfortunately, to adapt to the small ruined environment, the end manipulators of these robots usually lack enough sensors, moreover, the complex and unstable ruined environment further makes them hard to control. To dress this, we use tendon-sheath mechanisms to develop a slender robot with an elastic end gripper. In this paper, we propose a precise control method for the end gripper without output sensory feedback. Firstly, the gripper drive mechanism is simplified as a single tendon-sheath system with a spring load. After that, a tendon-sheath force transmission model is built. On this basis, we propose a force control method for the end gripper, it is composed of model-based friction compensation and adaptive sliding mode control. The transmission model and the force control method are then validated by experiments. The experimental results illustrate that the force transmission model can predict the distal force with high accuracy, the R2 (Coefficient of Determination) is over 0.993 and the RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) is below 0.60 N. The force control method can track the desired force precisely, the R2 is over 0.989 and the RMSE is below 0.74 N.

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Code Availability

The code and data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 52175005, the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK20220450, and the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST 2022r093.

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 52175005, Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK20220450, and Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST 2022r093.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automation, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Qi Zhang

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing, 211167, China

    Donghua Shen

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Mengqian Tian & Xingsong Wang

Authors
  1. Qi Zhang
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  2. Donghua Shen
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  3. Mengqian Tian
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  4. Xingsong Wang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Qi Zhang is in charge of Methodology, Validation and Writing Original Draft; Donghua Shen performs the validation experiment and the data collection; Mengqian Tian works on the methodology and Review and Editing of this paper; Xingsong Wang is the supervisor of this project, he is in charge of Project administration and Funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xingsong Wang.

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Zhang, Q., Shen, D., Tian, M. et al. Model-based Force Control of a Tendon-Sheath Actuated Slender Gripper Without Output Feedback. J Intell Robot Syst 106, 79 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01785-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01785-z

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