Development and implementation of real-time control modules for robotic waste management

This paper considers the problem of controlling the motion of manipulators to perform waste management tasks. In particular, we develop two real-time control modules for implementation with the Sequential Modular Architecture for Robotics and Teleoperation (SMART) which has been developed at Sandia National Laboratories. SMART provides a “generic” framework within which individual subsystems can be combined, simulated, and implemented for real-time control of complex robotic systems. Control modules developed in the paper include an adaptive gravity compensation controller and a real-time sensor-based collision avoidance strategy. The adaptive gravity compensation controller is a position regulation strategy that requires no information regarding the manipulator dynamic model or payload and can be proven to be passive. The whole-arm collision avoidance algorithm is implemented within a damped-least-squares inverse kinematic formulation. The example modules are demonstrated through computer simulation on a 15 degree-of-freedom manipulator