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Design, modeling, and constraint-compliant control of an autonomous morphing surface for omnidirectional object conveyance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2021

Ioannis A. Raptis Open the ORCID record for Ioannis A. Raptis [Opens in a new window] ,
Christopher Hansen  and
Martin A. Sinclair
Ioannis A. Raptis*
Affiliation:
Autonomous Robotic Systems Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, North Carolina 27411, USA
Christopher Hansen
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854, USA
Martin A. Sinclair
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts 01854, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: iraptis@ncat.edu
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Abstract

In this paper, we conceptualize, analyze, and assemble a prototype adaptive surface system capable of morphing its geometric configuration using an array of linear actuators to impose omnidirectional movement of objects that lie on the surface. The principal focus and contribution of this paper is the derivation of feedback control protocols–for regulating the actuators’ length in order to accomplish the object conveyance task–that scale with the number of actuators and the nonlinear kinematic constraints of the morphing surface. Simulations and experimental results demonstrate the advantages of distributed manipulation over static-shaped feeders.

Keywords

Distributed manipulationactuator networkslarge-scale spatial actuationcontrol of robotic systemsforce controlnovel applications of robotics
Type
Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , February 2022 , pp. 213 - 233
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This work is the complete version of the synoptic conference proceedings paper [5]. This full paper includes additional sections, clarifying remarks, and results compared to its conference counterpart.

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