Title:  Control, Safety and Coordination of Complex Robots

Committee: 

Dr. Hutchinson, Advisor

Dr. Egerstedt, Co-Advisor       

Dr. Coogan, Chair

Dr. Zhao

Dr. Vamvoudakis

Abstract:

In this thesis, we present a control framework for robotic manipulators, which compute solution while satisfying multiple constraints like torque, orientation, tracking, and safety in a unified manner. This is achieved by designing Rapidly Exponentially Stabilizing Control Lyapunov Function (RESCLF) and Control Barrier Functions (CBF) in operational space. We extend the framework to the robust formulation when parameters of the manipulators are not fully known and prove the convergence for the robust formulation. Finally, we extend the framework to wheeled inverted pendulum humanoid robot using a hierarchical framework for whole-body control of the humanoid robot. Finally, we propose to extend the framework to multiple manipulators for co-operative manipulation and implement it on actual 7-DoF KUKA LBR iiwa manipulator.