Adaptive variable impedance control for a modular soft robot manipulator in configuration space

Compliance is a strong requirement for human–robot interactions. Soft-robots provide an opportunity to cover the lack of compliance in conventional actuation mechanisms, however, the control of them is very challenging given their intrinsic complex motions. Therefore, soft-robots require new approaches to e.g., modeling, control, dynamics, and planning. One of the control strategies that ensures compliance is the impedance control. During the task execution in the presence of coupling force and position constraints, a dynamic behavior increases the flexibility of the impedance control. This imposes some additional constraints on the stability of the control system. To tackle them, we propose a variable impedance control in configuration space for a modular soft robot manipulator (MSRM) in the presence of model uncertainties and external forces. The external loads are estimated in configuration space using a momentum-based approach in order to reduce the calculation complexity, and the adaptive back-stepping sliding mode (ABSM) controller is designed to guard against uncertainties. Stability analysis is performed using Lyapunov theory which guarantees not only the exponential stability of each state under the designed control law, but also the global stability of the closed-loop system. The system performance is benchmarked against other conventional control methods, such as the sliding mode (SM) and inverse dynamics PD controllers. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed variable impedance control in stabilizing the position error and diminishing the impact of the external load compared to SM and PD controllers.