Mechanic Modeling and Nonlinear Optimal Control of Actively Articulated Suspension of Mobile Heavy-Duty Manipulators

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytic model and nonlinear optimal control strategy for actively articulated suspensions in heavy-duty mobile manipulators, improving stability and dynamic performance through precise inertial parameter computation and stability metrics.

Contribution

It introduces a screw theory-based mechanical model and an optimal control framework for actively articulated suspensions, enhancing stability analysis and control accuracy.

Findings

Enhanced stability metrics for mobile manipulators.

Improved computational speed and accuracy in simulations.

Effective control of suspension to prevent overturning.

Abstract

This paper presents the analytic modeling of mobile heavy-duty manipulators with actively articulated suspension and its optimal control to maximize its static and dynamic stabilization. By adopting the screw theory formalism, we consider the suspension mechanism as a rigid multibody composed of two closed kinematic chains. This mechanical modeling allows us to compute the spatial inertial parameters of the whole platform as a function of the suspension's linear actuators through the articulated-body inertia method. Our solution enhances the computation accuracy of the wheels' reaction normal forces by providing an exact solution for the center of mass and inertia tensor of the mobile manipulator. Moreover, these inertial parameters and the normal forces are used to define metrics of both static and dynamic stability of the mobile manipulator and formulate a nonlinear programming problem that optimizes such metrics to generate an optimal stability motion that prevents the platform's overturning, such optimal position of the actuator is tracked with a state-feedback hydraulic valve control. We demonstrate our method's efficiency in terms of C++ computational speed, accuracy and performance improvement by simulating a 7 degrees-of-freedom heavy-duty parallel-serial mobile manipulator with four wheels and actively articulated suspension.