Introducing Switched Adaptive Control for Self-Reconfigurable Mobile Cleaning Robots

Madan Mohan Rayguru    Spandan Roy    Lim Yi    Mohan Rajesh Elara    Simone Baldi   

Delhi Technological University    IIIT Hyderabad, India    Singapore University of Technology and Design    School of Mathematics, Southeast University   


Reconfigurable robots provide an attractive option for cleaning tasks, thanks to their better area coverage and adaptability to changing environment. However, the ability to change morphology creates drastic changes in the reconfigurable robot dynamics, and existing control design techniques do not take this into account. Neglecting configuration changes can lead to performance degradation and, in the worst scenarios, instability. This paper proposes to embed the changes arising from reconfiguration in the control design, via a switched uncertain Euler-Lagrangian model. Accordingly, a novel switched adaptive design is proposed for trajectory tracking. Closed-loop stability is assured using the multiple Lyapunov function framework, and the design is implemented and validated on a self-reconfigurable pavement cleaning mobile robot (PANTHERA).