Fixed-time Adaptive Neural Control for Physical Human-Robot
Collaboration with Time-Varying Workspace Constraints
Abstract
Physical human-robot collaboration (pHRC) requires both compliance and
safety guarantees since robots coordinate with human actions in a shared
workspace. This paper presents a novel fixed-time adaptive neural
control methodology for handling time-varying workspace constraints that
occur in physical human-robot collaboration while also guaranteeing
compliance during intended force interactions. The proposed methodology
combines the benefits of compliance control, time-varying integral
barrier Lyapunov function (TVIBLF) and fixed-time techniques, which not
only achieve compliance during physical contact with human operators but
also guarantee time-varying workspace constraints and fast tracking
error convergence without any restriction on the initial conditions.
Furthermore, a neural adaptive control law is designed to compensate for
the unknown dynamics and disturbances of the robot manipulator such that
the proposed control framework is overall fixed-time converged and
capable of online learning without any prior knowledge of robot dynamics
and disturbances. The proposed approach is finally validated on a
simulated two-link robot manipulator and then extended to the simulated
UR10 robot. Simulation results show that the proposed controller is
superior in the sense of both tracking error and convergence time
compared with the existing barrier Lyapunov functions based controllers,
while simultaneously guaranteeing compliance and safety.