National Workshop

on
RCAPCEEA-2020

Advanced motion control in Robotics

Dr. S. Berclin Jeyaprabha
Associate Professor, EEE,
CHRIST University, Bangalore

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Contents

Robotics

- Future
- Robot Anatomy and configurations
- Manipulator Control
- Electric Drives
- Controllers

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Robotics

A robot is a software-controllable mechanical device that uses

sensors to guide one or more end-effectors through programmed
motions in a workspace in order to manipulate/handle physical objects.

“Robotics is the intersection of science, engineering and technology that

produces machines, called robots, that substitute for (or replicate) human
actions”

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Future?

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Activity 1

Go to www.menti.com and use the code 1571542

● Which branch of Engineering has more impact on the growth of robotics?

Your responses…..

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Robot Anatomy

● The assembly of body, arm and wrist is called “Manipulator”

● The robot’s wrist is attached to a hand which is called “end effector”
● The body and arm joints position the end effector and wrist joints orient
the end effector

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Robot Configurations

Variety of sizes, shapes and physical configuration

1. Cartesian Coordinates Configuration-PPP
2. Cylindrical Configuration-RPP
3. Polar or Spherical Configuration-RRP
4. Articulated or Jointed-arm Configuration-RRR
5. Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) Configuration-RRP

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Parts… Joints allow restricted relative motion between two

links. The following table describes five types of
joints.

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How to move or operate the manipulator or end-effector?

Drives are the important parts of Robots which actuate the robot joints to move
according to the required position and orientation.

Types of Drives
● Electric drive system- small robots and precise applications(- Costly)
● Hydraulic drive system- High payload capacity/heavy loads (- Oil Leakage)
● Pneumatic drive system-small robots (-Slow in speed)

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Electric Drives
Examples of electric drive systems include: DC servomotors, stepper motors;
AC servomotors

Advantages of Electric drives:

● Quiet
● Less floor space
● Electric power readily available
● Clean-air environments
● Precision

Disadvantages of electric drives:

● Poor dynamic response

● Output power relative to weight is low
● To increase torque, a larger and heavier motor must be used which is costly
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Control of Drives

● The drives themselves receive commands from a supervisory controller that

also maintains overall functionality of the entire system/platform.

● Motion control for the entire robotic system has traditionally been categorized
into two areas:

 Centralized
 Distributed

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Centralized Control

A centralized control scheme requires the controller to continually calculate all

torque/force, speed and position commands (called the control loops) for every
axis, while simultaneously running complex programs that plan not only the
motion profiles but also scan I/O or vision information to maintain complete robot
operations.

This can place a heavier burden on the processor(s) selected for use and may
make the system unmanageable.

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Distributed control systems

● Motor control requirements are placed with the drives themselves and
conducted over network communications where the controller decides the
activities of the drives with limited computation needed.
● This allows the controller to operate more effectively and be more available
for all other system functions.

CANopen, EtherCAT, Modbus, Ethernet POWERLINK, PLCopen, etc. offer fully

documented methods of getting up and running quickly and greatly reduce
development time

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Motion of Robots

There are four different types of controls :

 Limited sequence,
 Point-to-point (PTP),
 Continuous path
 Intelligent

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Activity 2

Go to www.menti.com and use the code 1571542

● Difference between the path planning and the trajectory planning?

Your responses…..

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Limited Sequence control

● Each link can only stop at a few limited positions, controlled by sensors,
mechanical stops.
● Limited sequence is the simplest form of motion control.
● However, it has limited applications in robot arm itself today

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Point-to-point control

● The robot can move point to point. Each axis or joint has many stoppable
positions.
● However, trajectory is not controllable at will, although it may be roughly
deterministic.
● Trajectory is the path and the speed along the path of a motion. Some PTP
controls can be complex.

Types
1. One joint at a time
2. Slew motion - All joints that require motion start simultaneously at default
joint speeds.
3. (linear) Joint interpolation - Joints that require movement start
simultaneously and stop simultaneously.

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Continuous path Control

● Several joints can move simultaneously in some user-specified trajectory. The

most useful ones are linear and circular interpolations.
● Common way to achieve continuous path control is by using via or
intermediate points.
● The controller will attempt to follow a path by many via points.
● For each via points, the controller will attempt to pass the point and maintain
speed.

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Intelligent control

● Motions are flexible based on sensors and intelligent to cope with various
situations.
● Industrial robots are becoming increasingly intelligent. In this context.
an intelligent robot is one that exhibits behaviour that makes it seem
intelligent.
● Some of the characteristics that make a robot appear intelligent include the
capacity to:
1. interact with its environment
2. make decisions when things go wrong during the work cycle
3. communicate with humans
4. make computations during the motion cycle
5. respond to advanced sensor inputs such as machine vision

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Control System

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Manipulator Control System

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Example: Electric Drives (Servo Drives)

Servo drives are designed to convert electrical power into precision-

controlled motion–e.g., controlled torque (torque servo), controlled
speed (velocity servo) or controlled position (positioning servo).

This typically requires at least three elements: the motor, feedback of

some sort, and an amplifier

Motor Types:
DC brush motors-Linear and rotary
DC brushless motors
AC induction servo motors

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DC brush motors

Rotary DC Motors

● Motors typically are long and thin, which allows for quick acceleration due to
the lower inertia, as well higher speed due to the lower centrifugal forces of a
smaller diameter armature

Linear DC motors

● They have the commutator and windings along the path of travel, and power
may be supplied to the brushes by a bus bar or an umbilical cord.
● The “moving short” with the brushes has a permanent magnet, which is
attracted to the energized stationary coil.
● A linear bearing is used to create an air gap and low friction

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DC brushless motors
● Brushless DC motors may be either rotary or linear and come in many
varieties.
● They are probably the most prevalent kinds of servo motors due to their quick
response time, low inertia-, weight- and size-to-torque ratios, and reasonable
cost.
● Rotary brushless DC motors have either ceramic or rare earth magnets
banded onto the rotor.
● Ceramic magnets (typically ferrite) cost less but have higher inertia and size
per torque than high-performance earth magnets (typically samarium cobalt
or neodymium-iron-boron).
Advantages:
● As brushes are absent, the mechanical energy loss due to friction is less which enhanced efficiency.
● It can operate at high-speed under any condition. There is no sparking and much less noise during
operation.
● More electromagnets could be used on the stator for more precise control.
● BLDC motors accelerate and decelerate easily as they are having low rotor inertia.

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AC induction servo motors

Rotary AC Induction Servo Motor:

● The rotary design is typically long and thin, making it suitable for higher
speeds and quicker acceleration and deceleration profiles due to the lower
inertia.
● A separate constant-velocity blower motor is often attached to the back of the
servo motor for cooling during low-speed operation.

Linear induction servo motors

● The advantage of linear induction servo motors over brushless servo motors
is their maximum speed. Since they do not have to fight the back EMF
(electromotive force) of the motor through the magnets, they can reach
velocities of more than 2000 in/sec (5080 cm/sec) or 110 miles/hour (177
km/hr) with enough travel.
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Feedback….

● Brush-style rotary DC servo motors may use

tachometer feedback (typically 7 volts/1000 rpm),
encoder feedback, and/or resolver feedback.
● Brush-style linear DC servo motors use encoder or
laser feedback. Brushless rotary DC servo motors may
use hall feedback and/or encoder feedback, or
resolver feedback.
● Brushless linear DC motors may use linear encoder
feedback with halls or sinusoidal commutated linear
encoder feedback.
● Induction rotary motors use a rotary encoder, whereas
induction linear motors use a linear encoder.

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Amplifier section/ Converters

● The amplifier converts the output power from the distribution panel to
controlled output that will cause the motor to move at the correct velocity.
● Most servo amplifiers are PWM (pulse width modulated) style.

Fig. Converter section of a Fig. Typical single-axis, three-phase output.

single-axis amplifier. For DC, eliminate one set of transistors.

Note: The devices described here are called amplifiers because they typically take a control signal from a
motion controller or CNC and amplify this command to higher power motion.

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Control Signals

There are three kinds of control signals:

● Pulse and direction - Each pulse commands a velocity or position
● ±10VDC-either a speed command or a torque command
● serial command and feedback

Fig. Pulse train

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The Controller

● Standalone card–Requires power supplies, mounting and a place to reside.

● Resident card–Resides inside the computer, using the computer’s mounting
and power supply.
● Standalone box–Requires a single power supply with the program resident
inside of the box.
● Intelligent amplifier–Resides inside an amplifier package, using the
mounting and power supply from the amplifier

Function:
1. Reading the velocity, direction
2. Providing task based commands (What to do, interface with the operator and
safety devices)
3. Amplifier control

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● The motion controller mathematically generates a trajectory or path–where

the part should be at each specific servo loop (time period).
● It also receives position feedback (typically encoder or laser) that tells it the
actual position.
● The controller then compares the trajectory with the actual position and
generates a change in analog output (±10VDC) to help correct for the
difference (or error).
● The process of calculating trajectory, comparing it to actual position, and
correcting for error is repeated at each servo loop. The amount of change
generated will depend on the tuning gains that are programed into the
controller.

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Topology
● Feedback can come from the motor to the motion controller; from the motor to
the amplifier and the amplifier to the motion controller; or from the work piece
to the motion controller.
● The advantages of having the feedback on the motor are lower cost and a
less complicated package.
● The advantage of having feedback on the work piece is increased accuracy in
product positioning.

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STATE OF ART CONTROL SYSTEMS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
● Robot Path Planning (the independent movements from start to end point
while satisfying certain constrains within the work environment)
● Robot Path Planning -finding a collision free environment to move from one
point to another.
● Traditional techniques (PID)- efficient over very limited range of environment.

This is where soft computing steps in, fuzzy logic, neural network, evolutionary
algorithms etc. are some of the techniques that help achieve precision and
certainty.

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HUMAN- ROBOT COLLABORATION

To work effectively and efficiently with human beings, they rely on the users so
they can observe their actions. The anticipatory control enables all the robots to
anticipate actions of their human counterparts.

It proposes an “anticipatory control” method that enables robots to proactively

plan and execute actions based on an anticipation of a human partners task
intent inferred from their gaze patterns.

Robot manipulators performs tasks that are executed by human beings. Human
beings are not limited by their intelligence, but are limited by their physical
strength. This can be overcome by robots.

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● Gesture recognition using Kinect

● Adaptive upper Arm based Robot Control System

Electromyography (EMG) is an
electro-diagnostic medicine
technique for evaluating and
recording the electrical activity
produced by skeletal muscles

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What did we discuss?

Robotics

-Future
-Robot Anatomy and configurations
-Manipulator Control
-Electric Drives
-Controllers

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For feedback/query

Email: berclin.Jeyaprabha@christuniversity.in or berclin@gmail.com

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