This paper addresses the position control of continuum manipulators. Their performances in terms of speed limitation and position accuracy are often mediocre compared with rigid body based robots. In regards to continuum manipulators control, nonadaptive kinematic schemes were shown poor performance in terms of tracking position accuracy, and existing adaptive schemes were time-consuming. This paper presents a novel adaptive control scheme, namely the adaptive support vector regressor controller. The proposed approach exploits the optimization learning methods which yield global solutions of the training problem while keeping small size regressors. These characteristics make it possible to accelerate the convergence of the closed-loop system, thus reducing the execution time. The experimental results obtained using the compact bionic handling assistant robot demonstrate that nonadaptive kinematic architectures even in the presence of accurate learning models are not robust enough to deal with these challenging platforms and that adaptive control schemes can significantly improve the performance.

Compact Bionic Handling Assistant (CBHA) is a continuum manipulator, with pneumatic-based actuation and compliant gripper. This bionic arm is attached to a mobile robot named Robotino. Inspired by the elephant's trunk, it can reproduce biological behaviors of trunks, tentacles, or snakes. Unlike rigid link robot manipulators, the development of high performance control algorithm of continuum robot manipulators remains a challenge, particularly due to their complex mechanical design, hyper-redundancy and presence of uncertainties. Numerous studies have been investigated for modeling of such complex systems. Such continuum robots, like the CBHA present a set of nonlinearities and uncertainties, making difficult to build an accurate analytical model, which can be used for control strategies development. Hence, learning approach becomes a suitable tool in such scenarios in order to capture un-modeled nonlinear behaviors of the continuous robots. In this paper, we present a qualitative modeling approach, based on neuronal model of the inverse kinematic of CBHA. A penalty term constraint is added to the inverse objective function into Distal Supervised Learning (DSL) scheme to select one particular inverse model from the redundancy manifold. The inverse kinematic neuronal model is validated by conducting a real-time implementation on a CBHA trunk.

To fit well the needs of autonomous mobile manipulator, two robust adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy motion controllers are developed. The first controller, based on a computational efficient processing scheme for fuzzy reactive navigation, is used to generate the commands for the servo-systems of robot arm so that, locally, it may choose its way to its goal autonomously. The second fuzzy reactive navigation is implemented in mobile platform so that it maintains a permanent flexible path between two nodes in network generated by a probabilistic roadmap approach. In order to consider the compatibility of stabilisation, mobilisation and manipulation, we derive a coordinated fuzzy local planner algorithm so that the mobile manipulator can avoid stably unknown and/or dynamic obstacles The purpose of an integration of robust controller and Modified Elman Neural Network is to deal with unmodeled bounded disturbances and/or unstructured unmodeled dynamics.

A new robust neuro-fuzzy controller for autonomous and intelligent robot manipulators in dynamic and partially known environments containing moving obstacles is presented. The navigation is based on a fuzzy technique for the idea of artificial potential fields (APFs) using analytic harmonic functions. Unlike the fuzzy technique, the development of APFs is computationally intensive. A computationally efficient processing scheme for fuzzy navigation to reasoning about obstacle avoidance using APF is described, namely, the intelligent dynamic motion planning. An integration of a robust controller and a modified Elman neural networks (MENNs) approximation-based computed-torque controller is proposed to deal with unmodeled bounded disturbances and/or unstructured unmodeled dynamics of the robot arm. The MENN weights are tuned online, with no off-line learning phase required. The stability of the overall closed-loop system, composed by the nonlinear robot dynamics and the robust neuro-fuzzy controller, is guaranteed by the Lyapunov theory. The purpose of the robust neuro-fuzzy controller is to generate the commands for the servo-systems of the robot so it may choose its way to its goal autonomously, while reacting in real-time to unexpected events. The proposed scheme has been successfully tested. The controller also demonstrates remarkable performance in adaptation to changes in manipulator dynamics. Sensor-based motion control is an essential feature for dealing with model uncertainties and unexpected obstacles in real-time world systems.

This paper presents a fuzzy logic adaptive traffic signal controller for an isolated four-approaches intersection with through and lest-turning movements. The controller has the ability to make adjustments to signal timing in response to observed changes. The "urgency degree" term, which can describe the different user's demand for green time is used in fuzzy logic decision-making in our algorithm. Using three levels model of fuzzy controller, we can determine whether to extend or terminate the current signal phase and select the sequences of phases. This paper describes a flexible form of fuzzy logic signal control whose performance can be tuned off-line using a set of parameters which define the fuzzy set membership functions for the input variables. Our work also demonstrates the feasibility of using a multiobjective genetic algorithm (MOGA) to find a set of optimal parameters for a fuzzy controller with a range of possibly conflicting performance measures. Simulation results show that our proposed controller produces lower vehicle delays and percentage of stopped vehicles than the traffic-actuated controller.

An integration of a fuzzy controller and modified Elman neural networks (NN) approximation-based computed-torque controller is proposed for motion control of autonomous manipulators in dynamic and partially known environments containing moving obstacles. The navigation technique of robot control using artificial potential fields is based on the fuzzy controller. The NN controller can deal with unmodeled bounded disturbances and or unstructured unmodeled dynamics of the robot arm. The NN weights are tuned online, with no off-line learning phase required. The stability of the closed-loop system is guaranteed by the Lyapunov theory. The purpose of the controller, which is designed as a neuro-fuzzy controller, is to generate the commands for the servo-systems of the robot so it may choose its way to its goal autonomously, while reacting in real-time to unexpected events. The proposed scheme has been successfully tested. The controller also demonstrates remarkable performance in adaptation to changes in manipulator dynamics. Sensor-based motion control is an essential feature for dealing with model uncertainties and unexpected obstacles in real-time world systems.