Learning-Based Error-Constrained Motion Control for Pneumatic Artificial Muscle-Actuated Exoskeleton Robots With Hardware Experiments

Due to high biological adaptability and flexibility, pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) systems are widely employed in exoskeleton robots to accomplish rehabilitation training with repetitive motions. However, some intrinsic characteristics of PAMs and inevitable practical factors, e.g., high nonlinearity, hysteresis, uncertain dynamics, and limited working space, may badly degrade tracking performance and safety. Hence, this paper designs a new learning-based motion controller for PAMs, to simultaneously compensate for model uncertainties, eliminate tracking errors, and satisfy preset motion constraints. Particularly, when PAMs suffer from periodically non-parametric uncertainties, the elaborately designed continuous update algorithm can repetitively learn them online to enhance tracking accuracy, without employing upper/lower bounds of unknown parts for controller design and gain selections. Meanwhile, some non-periodic uncertainties are handled by a robust term, whose value is only related to the initial states of PAMs, instead of exact upper bounds of unknown dynamics. From safety concerns, we introduce error-related saturation terms to limit initial amplitudes of control inputs within saturation constraints and avoid overlarge errors inducing overlarge acceleration. Meanwhile, the constraint-related auxiliary term is utilized to keep tracking errors within allowable ranges. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first learning-based error-constrained controller for uncertain PAM-actuated exoskeleton robots, to realize high-precision tracking control and improve safety without additional gain conditions. Moreover, the asymptotic convergence of tracking errors is strictly proven by Lyapunov-based stability analysis. Finally, based on a self-built exoskeleton robot, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified by hardware experiments.