Fault tolerance in cooperative robotic manipulators

Author(s)

Renato Tinós

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC/SBD)
• Defense date: 2003-01-30

Examining board members

Marco Henrique Terra; Marcel Bergerman; Fernando Antonio Campos Gomide; Edson Roberto de Pieri; Valentin Obac Roda

• Advisor: Marco Henrique Terra

Abstract

The problem of fault tolerance in cooperative manipulators rigidly connected to an undeformable load is addressed in this work. Fault tolerance is reached by reconfiguration of the control system. The faults are firstly detected and isolated. Then, the control system is reconfigured according to the isolated fault. Four faults are considered: free-swinging joint faults, locked joint faults, incorrectly measured joint position faults, and incorrectly measured joint velocity faults. Free-swinging and locked joint faults are detected and isolated by artificial neural networks. MLP’s are utilized to reproduce the dynamics of the fault-free system and an RBF is used to classify the residual vector. Incorrectly measured joint position and velocity faults are detected and isolated based on the kinematic constraints imposed on the cooperative system. When free-swinging and locked joint faults are isolated, the control laws are reconfigured. Control laws for motion and squeeze of the object are developed in these cases. When incorrectly measured joint position faults and incorrectly measured joint velocity faults are isolated, the faulty measurements are replaced by their estimates. Results obtained in simulations and in real cooperative robots indicate that the proposed methodology is viable. (AU)