Real-time control for a serpentine manipulator

This paper considers the problem of controlling the motion of highly redundant manipulators to achieve a desired set of tasks. The paper develops two real-time control modules for implementation with the Sequential Modular Architecture for Robotics and Teleoperation (SMART) which has been developed at Sandia National Laboratories. SMART provides a "generic" framework within which individual subsytems can be combined, simulated, and implemented for real-time control of complex robotic systems. Control modules developed in the paper include an adaptive gravity compensation controller and a real-time redundancy resolution strategy. The adaptive gravity compensation controller is a position regulation strategy that requires no information regarding the manipulator dynamic model or payload and can be proven to be passive. The redundancy resolution strategy uses a damped-least-squares (DLS) inverse kinematic formulation. The example controller modules are demonstrated through computer simulation on a 20 degree-of-freedom (DOF) serpentine manipulator.