Impact Control in Hydraulic Actuators

Every manipulator contact task that begins with a transition from free motion to constraint motion may exhibit impacts that could drive the system unstable. Stabilization of manipulators during this transition is, therefore, an important issue in contact task control design. This paper presents a discontinuous controller to regulate the transition mode in hydraulic actuators. The controller, upon sensing a nonzero force, positions the actuator at the location where the force was sensed, thus, exerting minimal force on a nonmoving environment. The scheme does not require force or velocity feedback as they are difficult to measure throughout the short transition phase. Also, no knowledge about the environment or hydraulic parameters is required for control action. Due to the discontinuity of the control law, the control system is nonsmooth. First, the existence, continuation and uniqueness of Filippov’s solution to the system are proven. Next, the extension of Lyapunov stability theory to nonsmooth systems is employed to guarantee the global asymptotic convergence of the entire system’s state towards the equilibrium point. Complete dynamic characteristics of hydraulic functions and Hertz-type contact model are included in the stability analysis. Experiments are conducted to verify the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed controller. They include actuator collisions with hard and soft environments and with various approach velocities.