Nonholonomic manipulators. (Q1773949)

The presented monograph evolved from of the author's Ph.D. dissertation written under the supervision of Yoshihiko Nakamura at the University of Tokyo. The work builds upon an increasing interest in nonholonomic mechanical systems which have attracted several researchers in control and robotics. A key feature of the book is the possibility to exploit nonholonomic theory to design innovative mechanical systems with a reduced number of actuators without reducing the size of their controllable space. The volume offers a comprehensive treatment of the problem from the theoretical development of the various control schemes to prototyping new types of manipulators, while testing their performance by simulation and experiments in a number of significant cases. The contents of the monograph are organized as follows. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to nonholonomic mechanics and a detailed preview of previous and current works. Chapter 2 is devoted to the design of nonholonomic manipulators. It is shown how a manipulator of \(n\) revolute joints can be controlled by using only two actuators and a special kind of mechanical transmissions. The nonholonomic gear is designed to transmit input angular velocities to manipulator joints from the actuator which is on the base. Nonholonomic kinematic constraints are created by rolling contacts between a ball and wheels, which transmit angular velocities. The designed nonholonomic manipulator is shown to be completely controllable. Prototyping and control of the nonholonomic manipulator is presented in Chapter 3. Various important issues in mechanical design are discussed and the analysis and computation of the driving force of the nonholonomic gears are given. Nonlinear controllers including both open-loop ones and feedback ones are successfully applied to the prototype. Some practical control strategies for real implementations are proposed. Chapter 4 is devoted to design of the chained form manipulator. There are many possible alternatives for designing controllable underactuated manipulators with two actuators using the nonholonomic gear. The nonholonomic manipulator was designed focusing on mechanical simplicity. Several related problems were faced upon and explained. Simulation results are shown. Prototyping and control of the chained form manipulator is presented in Chapter 5. A prototype of the chained form manipulator, which consists of five joints, is fabricated and its behavior is investigated in detail. Chapter 6 concludes the whole work and provides some remarks. At the end a long list of references related to the topic is given.