Industrial robots rapidly gained popularity as they can perform tasks quickly, repeatedly and accurately in static environments. However, in modern manufacturing, robots should also be able to safely interact with arbitrary objects and dynamically adapt their behavior to various situations. The large masses and rigid constructions of industrial robots prevent them from easily being re-tasked. In this context, this work proposes an immediate solution to make rigid manipulators compliant and able to efficiently handle object interactions, with only an add-on module (a custom designed instrumented compliant wrist) and an original control framework which can easily be ported to different manipulators. The proposed system utilizes both offline and online trajectory planning to achieve fully automated object interaction and surface following with or without contact where no prior knowledge of the objects is available. To minimize the complexity of the task, the problem is formulated into four interaction motion modes: free, proximity, contact and a blend of those. The free motion mode guides the robot towards the object of interest using information provided by a RGB-D sensor. The RGB-D sensor is used to collect raw 3D information on the environment and construct an approximate 3D model of an object of interest in the scene. In order to completely explore the object, a novel coverage path planning technique is proposed to generate a primary (offline) trajectory. However, RGB-D sensors provide only limited accuracy on the depth measurements and create blind spot when it reaches close to surfaces. Therefore, the offline trajectory is then further refined by applying the proximity motion mode and contact motion mode or a blend of them (blend motion mode) that allow the robot to dynamically interact with arbitrary objects and adapt to the surfaces it approaches or touches using live proximity and contact feedback from the compliant wrist. To achieve seamless and efficient integration of the sensory information and smoothly switch between different interaction modes, an original hybrid switching scheme is proposed that applies a supervisory (decision making) module and a mixture of hard and blend switches to support data fusion from multiple sensing sources by combining pairs of the main motion modes. Experimental results using a CRS-F3 manipulator demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the proposed method.

Submitted by RAUL KATAYAMA MANSANO null (rkmansano@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-11-04T01:12:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Raul Katayama Mansano.pdf: 4167710 bytes, checksum: 35cc706c4a721f9334825773f9f2ff77 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Juliano Benedito Ferreira (julianoferreira@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-11-10T13:57:40Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 mansano_rk_me_bauru.pdf: 4167710 bytes, checksum: 35cc706c4a721f9334825773f9f2ff77 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-10T13:57:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mansano_rk_me_bauru.pdf: 4167710 bytes, checksum: 35cc706c4a721f9334825773f9f2ff77 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-09 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Com os recentes avanços das tecnologias sem fio e a proliferação de sensores sem fio, há um crescente interesse na implementação de Sistemas Controle via Redes Sem Fio (WNCSs), que fornecem vantagens em relação às arquiteturas tradicionais ponto-a-ponto e às arquiteturas de redes cabeadas. Apesar das vantagens, a inserção de redes industriais na malha de controle impõe não-linearidades e restrições que afetam o desempenho e a estabilidade do WNCS. Além disto, uma questão fundamental para aplicações de WNCS é a vida útil da bateria de alimentação dos sensores sem fio, uma vez que é uma fonte limitada de energia. Como a transmissão da informação na rede sem fio requer um alto gasto energético pelo dispositivo, deve-se restringir a quantidade de comunicações para poupar bateria. Esta restrição inviabiliza o uso de sensores sem fio em diversas aplicações de WNCS. Neste contexto, este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de um controlador adaptativo multi-rate para eficiência energética em aplicações industriais de WNCSs, através da diminuição da frequência de transmissão de dados na rede e, portanto, redução do consumo energético dos dispositivos sem fio. Um controlador adaptativo auto-ajustável foi implementado para identificar o modelo do WNCS, simular tal modelo e sintonizar os parâmetros do controlador a cada passo de controle, fornecendo robustez contra distúrbios e não-linearidades inerentes ao WNCS. O diferencial do controlador adaptativo é a incorporação das técnicas de identificação por pacote e de controle multi-rate. A técnica de identificação por pacote consiste em transmitir mensagens com vários dados (não somente o mais atual) coletados durante o período de amostragem do sensor sem fio, melhorando a identificação do modelo do WNCS e, consequentemente, o desempenho do controlador adaptativo. A técnica de controle multi-rate consiste em usar dados virtuais de realimentação, provenientes do modelo simulado do WNCS, para possibilitar uma atuação sobre o processo a uma frequência mais rápida que a amostragem dos sensores sem fio, permitindo a redução das transmissões sem fio do WNCS. Resultados experimentais mostram que o controlador adaptativo multi-rate é robusto e efetivo para aplicações de WNCS, permitindo poupar energia das baterias dos sensores sem fio sem prejudicar significativamente o desempenho de controle do WNCS. As análises do impacto do período de amostragem e do parâmetro Γ do controlador permitiram a obtenção de valores ótimos para a melhoria da eficiência energética do WNCS. / Recent advances in wireless technologies and the proliferation of wireless sensors led to an increasing interest in the implementation of Wireless Networked Control Systems (WNCS), which provide advantages over traditional peer-to-peer and cabled networks architectures. Despite these advantages, inserting a communication network in the control loop impose nonlinearities and constraints which affect stability and performance of the system. Furthermore, a major issue in wireless applications is the lifetime of the sensors batteries, which are a limited source of power. As transmitting data over the network requires high-energy expenditure, it is imperative to reduce the number of communications, in order to save battery. This constraint makes it unfeasible to use wireless sensors in most WNCS applications. In this context, this work aims to develop a multi-rate adaptive controller to enhance energy efficiency in industrial WNCS applications, by reducing frequency of data transmission over the network, thus reducing power expenditure of the wireless devices. A self-tuning adaptive controller is implemented, which can identify the WNCS model, simulate such model and tune the controller parameters at each control step, then providing robustness to disturbance and inherent nonlinearities of the WNCS. The adaptive controller is augmented with a multi-rate control technique and packet-based identification. The packet-based identification consists in transmitting messages with a pack of data (instead of only transmitting the most recent one) sampled during the inter-samples period, thus improving identification of the WNCS model and, consequently, improving control performance. The multi-rate control technique consists in using virtual feedback data, provided by the simulated model of the WNCS, then enabling actuation faster than wireless sampling, allowing the reduction of wireless transmissions in the WNCS. Experimental results show that the implemented multi-rate adaptive controller is robust and effective to WNCS and improve battery lifetime without decreasing control performance of the WNCS significantly. By investigating the impacts of sampling period and of controller parameter Γ determined optimized values to improve energy efficiency of the WNCS.