Planning robotic tasks for impedance controllers in oscillating and uncertain environments

This thesis presents the result of a research work done in the synthesis of an impedance controller which can execute compliant tasks in oscillating and uncertain environments. A synthesis method is proposed for finding the best control parameters, such as the impedance parameters and the desired trajectory, for a robotic manipulator which has to execute a compliant task. The control parameters are derived from an optimization method. The optimization function simulates the task execution and evaluates the performance according to the specified task goals, which are expressed as inequalities on position, velocity and force responses. These goals are built in order to obtain the control parameters that will ensure the highest robustness in oscillation and uncertainty cases. The non-experimental method builds its results from decoupled linear impedance models of the robot and the environment. The synthesis is applied to three specific tasks performed on the live line maintenance of distribution network at Hydro-Quebec, an electric utility company