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Semi-active suspension systems promise to significantly reduce the necessary trade-off be-tween handling and passenger comfort present in conventional suspension systems by enabling active chassis and wheel control. Öhlins Racing AB have developed a semi-active suspension technology known as CES, Continuously controlled Electronic Suspension, based on solenoid control valves which are integrated into specially designed hydraulic dampers, and are currently developing control and estimation systems which will enable their application in advanced motorcycle suspensions. In these systems an important aspect is being able to accurately control the forces produced. Öhlins’ current system uses an open loop control strategy in which currents sent through the solenoid valves, to achieve the requested damping force under the prevailing circumstances, is calculated using experimentally derived static lookup tables. In this thesis a new closed loop control system, based on the direct measurement of the damper force, is developed and its performance is evaluated in comparison to the old one’s. Sufficient understanding of the system requires extensive modeling and therefore two different models have been developed; a simpler one used for model based control design and a more extensive, high fidelity model used for high accuracy simulations. The developed simulation model is the first of its kind that is able to capture the studied systems behavior with satisfactory accuracy, as demonstrated against real dynamometer measurements. The valves and damper behave in a highly non linear manner and the final controller design uses a combination of exact linearization, non linear state estimation, dynamical inversion and classical control theory. Simulation results indicate that the new controller reduces the root mean square force tracking error to about 63% of that of the existing controller in the evaluation scenarios used. Cascaded within the system is also closed loop current controllers. A developed model based controller is shown to reduce the rise time to less than 30% of that of the existing PID-controllers, reduce the overshoot and provide online estimates of the winding series resistance, providing the basis for future solenoid diagnosis and temperature tracking systems.

Teleoperation of hydraulic manipulators is of potential when the presence of the operator, in a remote location, is inconvenient or dangerous. Augmenting such teleoperated systems using haptic sensation will further enhance performance, safety, and convenience. The advantage of using haptic force becomes more evident when it is employed to compensate for undesirable phenomena such as existence of a delayed and lossy communication channel or excitation of the manipulator base. The focus of this thesis is on haptic-enabled control of base-excited hydraulic manipulators that are controlled through a wireless communication channel. The targeted application is live transmission line maintenance. Both unilateral and bilateral controls of teleoperated hydraulic manipulators are studied. On the unilateral front, position error is shown to be an important issue, especially when the position accuracy of the slave manipulator is violated due to fast motion of the operator’s hand at the master site, lack of responsiveness in actuation system, or poor quality of communication channel. With respect to bilateral control, three main challenges are identified, and solutions to these challenges are investigated: (i) accurate control of the slave manipulator when the communication channel is delayed and/or lossy, (ii) control of the teleoperated system when the slave manipulator is mounted atop a moving platform, and (iii) transparent force feedback to improve the position tracking of the system. First, effects of network quality and slave manipulator base excitation are examined on performance of the teleoperated system. The position error between the haptic device implement and the hydraulic manipulator end-effector is shown to increase when the network is delayed and lossy. Next, excitation of the slave manipulator base deviates the end-effector from its reference trajectory, and the position error therefore becomes larger. To alleviate the position inaccuracy, a position referenced force feedback scheme is proposed. The scheme makes the input dynamics a better match with the slave dynamics. Combined with the virtual fixture force, the virtual fixture is shown to aid the operator in following a predefined virtual fixture trajectory. Due to complexity of dynamics, performance evaluations are mostly conducted using experimental validations on actual system in a laboratory setting.