Adaptive hybrid suppression control of a wheeled mobile robot with active flexible members

A new control algorithm for an object manipulation task by a wheeled mobile robotic system with flexible members is studied here. Flexible members such as solar panels of wheeled mobile robotic systems and their flexible joints during a maneuver may get stimulated and vibrate. Therefore, such vibrations will cause some oscillatory disturbance forces on the moving base and manipulated object, which in turn produces error in the position and speed of the manipulating end-effectors. To encounter these flexibility effects, it is assumed that these members are activated. In this paper, first the system dynamics is partitioned into two rigid and flexible bodies' motion. Next, an applied model for control implementations on compounded rigid-flexible multi-body systems is developed. Then, based on a designed path/trajectory for a wheeled mobile robotic system, the Adaptive Hybrid Suppression Control (AHSC) is applied to perform an object manipulation task by such complicated rigid-flexible multi-body systems. Finally, a wheeled mobile robotic system is simulated which contains two 2-DOF planar manipulators with flexible joints, appended with two solar panels. Obtained results reveal the merits of the proposed model and new control algorithm which will be discussed.