Decentralized Control of Distributed Actuation in a Segmented Soft Robot Arm

Continuum robot manipulators present challenges for controller design due to the complexity of their infinite-dimensional dynamics. This paper develops a practical dynamics-based approach to synthesizing state feedback controllers for a soft continuum robot arm composed of segments with local sensing, actuation, and control capabilities. Each segment communicates its states to its two adjacent neighboring segments, requiring a tridiagonal feedback matrix for decentralized controller implementation. A semi-discrete numerical approximation of the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation is used to represent the robot arm dynamics. Formulated in state space representation, this numerical approximation is used to define an H∞ optimal control problem in terms of a Bilinear Matrix Inequality. We develop three iterative algorithms that solve this problem by computing the tridiagonal feedback matrix which minimizes the H∞ norm of the map from disturbances to regulated outputs. We confirm through simulations that all three controllers successfully dampen the free vibrations of a cantilever beam that are induced by an initial sinusoidal displacement, and we compare the controllers' performance.