Robust Motion Control for Mobile Manipulator Using Resolved Acceleration and Proportional-Integral Active Force Control

A resolved acceleration control (RAC) and proportional-integral active force control (PIAFC) is proposed as an approach for the robust motion control of a mobile manipulator (MM) comprising a differentially driven wheeled mobile platform with a two-link planar arm mounted on top of the platform. The study emphasizes on the integrated kinematic and dynamic control strategy in which the RAC is used to manipulate the kinematic component while the PIAFC is implemented to compensate the dynamic effects including the bounded known/unknown disturbances and uncertainties. The effectivenss and robustness of the proposed scheme are investigated through a rigorous simulation study and later complemented with experimental results obtained through a number of experiments performed on a fully developed working prototype in a laboratory environment. A number of disturbances in the form of vibratory and impact forces are deliberately introduced into the system to evaluate the system performances. The investigation clearly demonstrates the extreme robustness feature of the proposed control scheme compared to other systems considered in the study.