Motion and Force

Control of Multiple
Robotic Manipulators
Background
J.T. Wen Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Ken Kreutz-Delgado University of California, San
Diego

Automatica, Volume 28, Issue 4, July 1992

The purpose of the paper is to present a unified

perspective on the motion and force control
problem for multiple-arm systems and to propose
a framework for stability analysis of those
systems.
Design Philosophy
Assume the arms, the payload, and the grasps are all
rigid.
This assumption holds for most robotic systems.
This implies that the composite contact force from all the
arms can be decomposed into two orthogonal components,
only one of which effects the motion of the object.
The other force is internal to the held object: the squeeze
force
Therefore, as they are orthogonal, force control does not
affect object motion, although object motion does affect
the internal force
The authors then present the design philosophy for these
systems: design a stable motion control law without
consideration of force control. Then design a stable force
control law by treating the inertial force as a perturbation
(which is independent of the force control).
Control Architectures (Motion
Control)
The choice of the variable considered in the
control input results in different control
architectures.
1. The acceleration of a generalized coordinate.
The feedback-linearization approach
2. The composite tip force of all of the arms.
The arms-as-actuators approach
3. The joint torques of all of the arms.
The full dynamics approach
Model for Multiple-Arm Systems
Assume arms and held object are rigid and the
object is also rigid
No relative motion at the contact
A squeeze force can be applied without any
motion

Equations of motion are:

Model for Multiple-Arm Systems

These equations can be combined to solve for the
contact force f as:

f is uniquely solvable if and only if [ J A] has full

rank.
Under some general conditions, [ J A] having full
rank at every kinematically feasible configuration
is a general property, so we assume f is uniquely
solvable.
Model for Multiple-Arm Systems
For a given composite tip force f, there exists a
unique orthogonal decomposition for fc , the force
on the object:

This is called the move/squeeze decomposition

As a result, any term in of the form ,
with the last component in the squeeze
subspace does not affect motion of the system
i.e., if the force only squeezes the object, it does not
effect the motion of the object.
The control torque can then be decomposed into

where the compensation is model-based.

General Procedure
1. Design a stable motion controller for ,
ignoring the squeeze force.
2. Design the squeeze force controller by regarding
the motion-induced component of the squeeze
force as a disturbance that is unaffected by the
squeeze force or the squeeze control.
Motion Control
Feedback linearization and arms-as-actuators both
require full dynamical model information of the
manipulator.
For various reasons, the authors focus on the full
dynamics approach
For single arm systems, much work had been done
at the time of writing
The authors extend this to multi-arm systems in this
paper
Full Dynamics Approach
The Lyapunov function candidate is chosen to be
the total kinetic energy (for the arms and payload)
and an artificial potential energy which has its
global minimum at the set point.
There are three types of variables that can be
used in the potential energy:
1. Joint position (of all arms)
2. Tip position (of all arms)
3. Generalized coordinates
The first two over-specify the configuration of the
system and are not generalized coordinates.
For generalized coordinates, there are many
possible choices.
Set Point Control Problem
Consider the following Lyapunov function
candidate

where U* is any of the following:

Set Point Control Problem
The derivative of V along the solution is therefore:

respectively for the different values of U*.

By the invariance principle, this implies the
asymptotic convergence of to zero, i.e., the
arms always reach a steady state configuration.
This holds true even for infeasible joint and tip set
points in the joint and tip level feedback cases.
Set Point Control Problem
For the joint and tip level feedback cases, the solution
manifolds may contain a configuration where the
motion control component of each arm works against
each other and does not produce any motion. These
are known as the joint and tip Jam Manifolds,
respectively.
While the fixed set point control laws are a useful
exercise, especially in how it points out issues unique
to multiple-arm control (such as the Jam Manifold), the
fixed set point control paradigm is fundamentally
flawed because the closed loop trajectory transient is
not controlled.
For initial condition far away from the desired set point,
the transient is typically so wild that these control laws
are virtually unusable.
Moving Set Points
Consider desired trajectories that belong to

These are mild restrictions in point-to-point

operations---the desired trajectories are those that
reach a steady state.
We call S the class of moving set points.
Moving Set Points
Result 1: If the desired trajectory of the multiple-
arm system belongs to S, then the system with
control laws in (13) and PD feedback as in Table 3
has a known stability property (Table 4).
If the initial tracking error is 0, the maximum
trajectory tracking error is inversely proportional
to the size of the PD gains.

For the generalized coordinate feedback case, the

Jam Manifold is guaranteed to be just the zero
configuration. For the other two cases, it may be
that the nonzero error jammed configuration
exists (not discussed in this paper).
Moving Set Points
If full model information is assumed, precise force
control at every moment in time is possible: while
the model-independent control law reduces finite
force error only with the use of high gains.
Squeeze Force Control
As to not disturb the motion control, the squeeze
torque is chosen to be of the form

where is a full rank matrix whose columns

span the null
space of
The control variable for force control is now , and
the squeeze projection of the contact force can be
written as:

where is the motion-induced squeeze force

This tends to 0 if an asymptotically stable motion
control law is used.
Squeeze Force Control
can be chosen in one of two ways:
1. An optimization problem
2. A set point problem
The authors mostly ignore the optimization
problem, referring to previous literature, and turn
their attention to the set point problem.
If it is desired to have tight control of the squeeze
force, such as in the manipulation of delicate
objects, it may be necessary to choose from a
set point squeeze control problem.
However, without using full model information,
the squeeze force can only be controlled
asymptotically.
Squeeze Force Control
An important property of the motion-induced
squeeze force is that it is not effected by the
squeeze force, and can therefore be treated as an
external disturbance.
Let fcs,des be the desired value of the squeeze force
Assuming a stable motion control strategy, we are
interested in:
Stability of fcs
Transient performance (maximum force error)
Convergence rate
Noise reduction
Robustness with respect to time delay in force
measurements
Squeeze Force Control
For asymptotic stability, a feedforward control will
suffice, but provides no noise reduction.
If arm tip forces are measured, then a feedback
strategy is preferable, due to the hope for added
noise reduction and improved transient
performance.
The rigidity assumptions made necessitate extra
care in the control design.
Recognizing that the problem is caused by the
algebraic loop due to the proportional force
feedback, the authors suggest pre-processing the
measured force by a strictly causal filter before
feedback, making the control law:
Squeeze Force Control
This feedback law clearly follows the stability
property.
For transient behavior, the filter must be analyzed
in the Laplace domain.
Essentially, all control objectives are satisfied with
this law, provided that it is a stable filter with a
pole at the origin.
For example, an integrator has the desired
properties.
Result 2. For the multiple-arm control system
under consideration, if the arm configuration
converges to a steady state (i.e. velocity
converges to zero) and the gravity load is fully
compensated, then either the feedforward
controller or the feedback controller with C a
Jamming
Under non-generalized-coordinate feedback (such
as faint level and tip level control laws), the arms
converge to the Jam Manifold.
The members in the Jam Manifold other than the
desired set point are called the jammed
configurations, since they represent balance of all
the internal forces due to the applied torque and
gravity.
Essentially, if a quantity related to the kinematics
of the robot is sufficiently small, the map
describing the motion of the robot becomes a
contraction with the only fixed point at the desired
state.
Simulation Results
Performance comparison between fixed and
moving set point control laws.
Integral feedback squeeze control vs feedforward
squeeze control.
Simulation Results (1)
Simulation Results (2)

In general, feedback force control yields smaller

overshoot, much better transient response, and
no steady state error (due to the integral action).
Conclusions
The rigidity assumption on the held object allows
a useful decomposition of the contact spatial force
into a component moving the held object and
another component contributing only to the
internal forces.
The motion and force control problems can be
independently analyzed.
In the motion control, depending on the choice of
variables used in the control design, one obtains
three different control structures: the full
dynamics, arms-as-actuator and feedback
linearization control structures.
Conclusions
The actuator redundancy in a multiple-arm control
system can be resolved either through an
optimization (load balancing) or a squeeze force
set point control problem.
Integral force feedback control can achieve good
performance and possesses good robustness
properties.
Future research topics include a flexible held
object and/or a flexible environment (in the
contact case) and robustness analysis with
respect to the grasp map.
Questions?