A-PCC: Adaptive inverse kinematic control with decoupled sensing- and actuation inputs

Master Thesis (2025)
Author(s)

L.R. Dalenberg (TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering)

Contributor(s)

C. Santina – Mentor (TU Delft - Learning & Autonomous Control)

Christian Pek – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Robot Dynamics)

P. Pustina – Mentor (TU Delft - Learning & Autonomous Control)

Faculty
Mechanical Engineering
More Info
expand_more
Publication Year
2025
Language
English
Graduation Date
02-06-2025
Awarding Institution
Delft University of Technology
Programme
['Mechanical Engineering | Vehicle Engineering | Cognitive Robotics']
Faculty
Mechanical Engineering
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Soft continuum robots provide a compelling solution for safe interactions with unknown and unstructured environments, owing to their compliance and infinite degrees of freedom. However, the non-linear deformation and inherent underactuation pose a persistent challenge for real-time control and state estimation. To date, continuum structures are typically discretized using a fixed-parameter kinematic model, introducing a trade-off between model accuracy and computational efficiency.

This letter presents an adaptive kinematic modeling framework to address the challenge of underactuation in a different way - not by increasing model resolution or complexity - but by making the model parametric with respect to a set of parameters that are dynamically adapted using a novel inverse kinematic adaptive controller.

We formally prove stability of the adaptive controller and validate its performance through simulations and experiments, considering setpoint reaching tasks with variable end-effector payloads. Even though the approach introduces additional challenges, in comparison to the conventional fixed-parameter models presented in literature, the proposed solution enhances shape representation, redundancy resolution, and state inference while mitigating model complexity.

Files

MSc_thesis_final.pdf
(pdf | 40.8 Mb)
License info not available