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Some insects or mammals use antennae or whiskers to detect by the sense of touch obstacles or recognize objects in environments in which other senses like vision cannot work. Artificial flexible antennae can be used in robotics to mimic this sense of touch in these recognition tasks. We have designed and built a two-degree of freedom (2DOF) flexible antenna sensor device to perform robot navigation tasks. This device is composed of a flexible beam, two servomotors that drive the beam and a load cell sensor that detects the contact of the beam with an object. It is found that the efficiency of such a device strongly depends on the speed and accuracy achieved by the antenna positioning system. These issues are severely impaired by the vibrations that appear in the antenna during its movement. However, these antennae are usually moved without taking care of these undesired vibrations. This article proposes a new closed-loop control schema that cancels vibrations and improves the free movements of the antenna. Moreover, algorithms to estimate the 3D beam position and the instant and point of contact with an object are proposed. Experiments are reported that illustrate the efficiency of these proposed algorithms and the improvements achieved in object detection tasks using a control system that cancels beam vibrations.

This sequential paper aims to present studies on modelling and tip tracking control of a flexible single beam. It first outlines the flexible-beam robotic mechanism that was designed and built to be used for the force and torque sensory information-based modelling and control. It then details the vibration suppression controller strategy that is applied to this robotic system. The controller is designed with respect to a simple lumped model describing the dynamics of the system. Here the dynamics of the closed-loop controlled motor is inverted in order to obtain a system with unity dynamics. Further, the flexible-beam dynamics is input state linearized. Finally, a simple external feedback control, which is based on the measurements of beam deflections using a force and torque sensor, is implemented. The complete experimental setup was positioned by two servo-motors controlled by a proportional-integral-derivative controller for each axis. The proposed controllers allow the flexible beam to move continuously in a precise manner, so that it could be treated as an accurate positioning sensor. Simulation and experimental results provided at the end illustrate that the controllers designed and implemented produce a satisfactory control performance and adequate robustness to model uncertainties and system nonlinearities.

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En la actualidad se usan barras flexibles junto a sensores de fuerza y par para detectar obstáculos en robótica móvil. Además se utilizan estos dispositivos para la detección de superficies y el reconocimiento de objetos. Estos dispositivos, llamados antenas sensoras, representan una estrategia de detección activa en la cual un sistema con servomotores mueve la antena hasta que golpea con un objeto. En ese instante, la información obtenida de losángulos de los motores y la medida de los sensores de fuerza y par permiten saber la posición del punto de impacto con el objeto y suministran información valiosa sobre su superficie. Para mover la antena de manera rápida y precisa, este artículo propone un nuevo sistema de control en cadena abierta. La estrategia de control para reducir las vibraciones de la antena está basada en la técnica Input Shaping (IS). La antena realiza movimientos libres tanto azimutales como cenitales. Sin embargo, el movimiento cenital es claramente no lineal debido al efecto de la gravedad, el cual previene el uso de técnicas IS lineales. Por tanto, en este artículo se desarrolla un nuevo IS no lineal que tiene en cuenta el término de la gravedad. Los experimentos muestran la mejora en la reducción de la vibración del extremo para movimientos libres de la antena gracias a la técnica propuesta.