Robust Pressure Control in a Mobile Robot for Spraying Tasks

摘要

This article presents a robust control system aimed at regulating the output pressure of a spraying system mounted on a mobile robot for fumigation tasks despite changes in the vehicle velocity; that is, the pressure setpoints are calculated based on the actual velocity of the vehicle at each sampling time and on a predefined volume of pesticides to apply based on the crop growth state, and are then used in a feedback loop for pressure control purposes, where the controller accounts for uncertainty in the system. This article focuses on the dynamic modeling of the spraying system based on the reaction curve method (analysis of the response to open loop steps) and the development and test of a robust control strategy to achieve the desired pressure profile. Quantitative feedback theory has been used as a robust control technique to cope with system uncertainties and to improve the gain-scheduling strategy used in previous works. Illustrative results are shown and commented.