TOWARDS DEVELOPING FAILURE TOLERANT ROBOT MANIPULATORS WORKING IN CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTS

摘要

The paper extends recent development in the area of failure recovery techniques for robot manipulators working in remote and challenging environments. We use newly developed synthesis techniques for recovering from an arm actuator failure and test the ability of the robot manipulator to continue its mission despite the fault joint. A mobile platform (SMP) and a robot arm (AL5D), similar to the mechanical structure of the NASA Mars Rover, are integrated for the experimental validation. NI single board RIO platform (NI sbRIO 9632 XT) is used to control both the arm and platform, which operate in open loop accepting commands from a joystick and a keyboard. To form feedback logic, encoders are integrated to the motors for further experiments. The goal of our future research is to make the rover –arm system autonomous.