2017 9th International Conference on Intelligent Human-Machine Systems and Cybernetics

Robust Time Delay Estimation Based Intelligent

PID Control of a 6DOF Exoskeleton Robot

Fei Fei, Haoping Wang, Yang Tian

Sino-French International Joint Laboratory of Automatic Control and Signal Processing,
School of Automation
Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing
210094, China
E-mail: {hp.wang, tianyang}@njust.edu.cn

Abstract—This paper will focus on a 6DOF upper-limb
powered exoskeleton of healthy people or disabled people as
the research object. After analyzing the human body
physiological structure, this paper puts forward its own upper-
limb powered exoskeleton model and designes a complete
mechanical structure using SolidWorks. Then, it carries out a
thorough analysis on the selected upper-limb powered
exoskeleton model, using D-H matrix to establish the
corresponding kinematics model; After that, this paper
proposes robust time delay estimation based intelligent PID
controllers (TDE-iPIDs) to control this exoskeleton model,
which has simple structures, easy to adjust control parameters
and strong ability to resist uncertainty. Then, this paper
establishes a virtual prototype and imported it into
MATLAB/SimMechanics to do simulation. Finally, the
simulation results are given out.
Keywords-upper limb exoskeleton; kinematics modeling;
virtual prototype; MATLAB/SimMechanics; Model-free control;
TDE-iPIDs
I. INTRODUCTION
Several countries of the world are facing the problem of
aged society and yearly increased individuals with different
degree of impairment after stroke or other accidents.
Exoskeleton robot, launched in 2000, is a new type of robot
put forward by the United States when starting the project
Āenhance the function of the bodyā (EHPA)[1].
The existing exoskeletons are mainly used to be
therapeutic equipment, auxiliary equipment, haptics device
and master device for rehabilitation, force increasing,
virtual reality and teleoperation.
The design of the exoskeleton’s structures adopts the
anthropomorphic principle, which requires that the joint
positions and degrees of freedom are assigned to the human
body and that the actuator is installed in the corresponding
position of the representative muscles.
The human’s upper body is usually seen as a series of
seven degrees of freedom. University of Washington
developed a 7DOF ˄ degree of freedom ˅ upper-limb
exoskeleton called CADEN-7[2]ˈwhich then developed to
UL-EXO7 used for bilateral rehabilitation training. This 7
DOF exoskeleton can cover the 99% range of upper-limb
activities human need in daily life. Also, MAHI Exo ɛ[3], a
3 DOF exoskeleton developed by American Rice University,
is equipped with a tilting mechanism which is used for a
additional passive degree of freedom to adjust the
abduction/adduction of the shoulder.
In order to extend the range of the upper limbs as well as
simplifying complex systems, scholars add extra active or
passive degrees of freedom to simulate the motion of the
shoulder strap or to compensate for the axis deviation of the
joint. A typical example is SUEFUL-7[4], developed by
Saga Medical School, which uses a mobile rotating center
mechanism made up by a link and a slider to erase the side
effect on the shoulder joint of the axis deviation between
human and machine. What’s more, The Queen university in
Canada developed a exoskeleton called MEDARM[5]. Two
active degrees of freedom are added into it to realize the
lifting and leading/Retract of the shoulder joint. Although
these measures make the operation more comfortable for
human, the active degrees of freedom are added too. So, the
number of the actuators is increased, which leads higher cost.
We should take into account the human-machine
compatibility, the mechanical complexity and the cost when
designing a exoskeleton robot.
The upper-limb exoskeleton robot discussed in this paper
is aimed to increase the body's upper body strength, and
auxiliary health body of high strength work or assist the
mutilation disabled in necessary daily activities without
consuming too much physical energy.
The second section introduces the mechanical structure
of the upper-limb exoskeleton robot. The third section
introduces the kinematics model of the exoskeleton robot.
The forth section introduces the robust time delay estimation
based intelligent PID controllers (TDE-iPIDs), The fifth
section shows the simulation results based on the virtual
prototype and carries out a thorough comparison between
this two kind method. Finally, conclusions and perspective
are shown in the sixth section.
II. THE MECHANICAL STRUCTURE OF THE UPPER-LIMB
EXOSKELETON MODLE
Human upper limb (in left limbs, for example) can be
divided into the arm (including the wrist) and the palm of
hand. The arm has 7 degrees of freedom, including the
flexion/stretch, the abduction/adduction and the rotation of

978-1-5386-3022-8/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE 386

DOI 10.1109/IHMSC.2017.198
the shoulder joint, the flexion/stretch of the elbow, the TABLE I. THE D-H PARAMETERS OF THE 6DOF UPPER-LIMB
EXOSKELETON
flexion/stretch, the abduction/adduction and rotation of the
wrist. Rod θ i (rad) α i (rad) ai di
This paper makes a little improvement to meet the
human body movement better. Another rotation degree of 0-1 θ1 0 d0 d2
freedom of forearm is added so that the forearm build in the π
− θ2 π
−
model can be more flexible and support human body 1-2 2 2 0 0
movement better. Also, this paper ignores this two degrees π
+ θ3 −
π
0 −d3
2-3 2 2
of freedom to simplify the model.
π
Therefore, the six degrees of freedom of the model in 3-4 2
+ θ4 0 L1 0
this paper are the rotation, abduction/adduction, π
θ5 − − ( L2 + L3 )
flexion/stretch of the shoulder joint; the flexion/stretch of the 4-5 2 0
elbow joint; rotation of the forearm joint; the flexion/stretch 5-6 θ6
π
0 0
2
of the wrist joint.
According to the main dimensions of Chinese male Due to the D-H parameters above, we can get the 6
adults’ upper limb, this paper choose the following datas: the motion transformation matrixes A1 , A2 , A3 , A4 , A5 , A6 . And
length of the forearm----237mm, the length of the the upper the actuator at the end of the right hand is
arm----313mm. ª nX oX aX PX º
The object oriented mechanical model built by «n oY aY PY »»
SolidWorks is shown below. 0
6T = A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 =
« Y
« nZ oZ aZ PZ »
« »
0 0 ¬0 1¼
with
PX = d 0 + L1 ( S1C3 − C1S 2 S3 ) + ( L2 + L3 )( S1C34 − C1S 2 S34 ) + d 3C1C2
PY = d 3 S1C2 − ( L2 + L3 )(C1C34 + S1S2 S34 ) − L1 (C1C3 + S1S2 S3 )
PZ = ( L2 + L3 )(C2C3 S 4 + C2 S3C4 ) + d 3 S 2 + L1C2 S3 + d 2
where
(a) (b)
Si = sin θi , Ci = cos θi , Sα i = sin(α i ), Cα i = cos(α i ),
Figure 1. The mechanical model (a the side view, c the simplified Siq = sin(θi + θ q ), Ciq = cos(θi + θ q )
model(the left arm)).
[ PX PY PZ ] represents the coordinate values of the
T

And each connecting rod is set to be 0.15kg.
III. THE KINEMATICS MODLE
This paper uses the modified D-H model[6] to carry out
the kinematics modeling. Specific steps are as following.
A. Calculating the forward kinematic model.
This paper builds the kinematic model of the left arm.
actuator at the wrist relative to the coordinate system 0.
Obviously, the input and output trajectory are perfectly
coincidence, so the inverse kinematics calculation is correct.
B. The analysis of workspace.
This paper uses the Monte Carlo method to analysis the
workspace of the motion range of the terminal of this
exoskeleton robot. 0.8
1

The reference coordinate system are shown in the top right 0.6

corner of Fig.2.
0.5 0.4
z/m

0.2
y/m

0
0

-0.5 -0.2
1
1 -0.4
0 0.5
y/m 0 x/m -0.6
-1 -0.5 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
x/m
(a) (b)
1 1

0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4
z/m
z/m

0.2 0.2

0 0

-0.2 -0.2

-0.4 -0.4
-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
x/m y/m

(c) (d)

Figure 2. The coordinate system of each connecting rod of the left arm. Figure 3. The 3D workspace and projections of the exoskeleton
robot((a)the 3D workspace, (b)x-y projection, (c)z-x projection, (d)y-z
projection).

387
 Human’s shoulder is like a spherical joint, the elbow Therefore, the proportion, integration and differentiation
movement is a one-way movement, and the wrist movement coefficients can be determined by pole placement.
doesn’t affect the terminal position. So, the human arm’s
motion range is like a sphere. V. THE SIMULATION BASED ON THE VIRTUAL
PROTOTYPE
IV. ROBUST TIME DELAY ESTIMATION BASED Since the mathematical model is nonlinear and highly
INTELLIGENT PID CONTROL coupled, it will be hard to achieve the control target through
This section introduces the control method, including the the simulation based on it. So, this paper carries out a virtual
traditional PID controller and the robust time delay prototype of upper limb exoskeleton by SolidWorks and
estimation based intelligent PID controllers (TDE-iPIDs). import it into MATLAB/SimMechanics to do simulation.
A. The PID controller
For an exoskeleton robot with n joints, when using the
PID control, the torque of each degree of freedom is
described as
τ = K P (qd − q ) + K I ³ (qd − q )dt + K D (qd − q )
where qd , qd ∈ R n are desired joint degrees and angular
velocity vector, q, q ∈ R n are actual joint degrees and
angular velocity, τ ∈ R n is torque vector, K P , K I , K D ∈ R n×n are
proportion, integration and differentiation coefficients.
B. The TDE-iPIDs controller
To obtain overcome the shortages of the PID control and
ensure the simpleness of the control structure, this paper
proposes robust time delay estimation based intelligent PID Figure 4. The TDE-iPIDs control of the left arm.
controllers (TDE-iPIDs)[7].
This method is a kind of Model-free Control method, Since the kinematic singularity during the exoskeleton
which uses the local model to replace the complex math robot’s motion isn’t taken into consideration, this paper
model. specifies the proper motion range of each degree of freedom.
The local model used can be described as Also, θ 5 , θ 6 are uncontrolled joint, so this paper set them to
be 0 during simulation (Take the inital position of the virtual
q (ν ) = F + ∧τ (1 )
prototype into consideration and set flexion, abduction and
(ν ) T
ª
(ν ) (ν )
1
(ν )
2
(ν )
3
(ν ) (ν )
where q = ¬ q , q , q , q4 , q5 , q6 ¼ , is always 1 or º ν pronation to beþ+ÿ).
2, ∧ = diag[α1 , α 2 , α 3 , α 4 , α 5 , α 6 ] , α i is a constant defined by TABLE II. THE REFERENCING INPUTS AND PARAMETERS IN THE
users to ensure the α iτ i and q i(ν ) are in the same order of SIMULATION

magnitude. F ∈ R contains all unmodeling parts and Joint DOF Motion Input
possible disturbs in the system. When ν = 1 , range signal
(degree) (rad)
τ = − ∧ −1 ( F − qd − ( K P E + K I ³ E + K D E )) (2 )
Shoulder Abduction/Adduction π π
− cos t −
In order to estimate the unmodeling F, this paper adopts  -90~0 4 4
the time delay method. Assuming that F is continuous and L Rotation
0 0
is a sufficiently small amount of time, then Flexion/stretch π 5π
F( t ) ≅ F( t − L )  -135~-90 8
cos t −
8
The estimation of F can be described as Elbow Flexion/stretch π π
− cos t +
0~45 8 8
Fˆ( t )  Fˆ( t − L ) (3) Forearm Rotation
-225~-180 0
Fˆ(t ) = Fˆ(t − L ) = q((νt −)L ) − ∧τ (t − L ) (4) Wrist Flexion/stretch
0 0
τ = − ∧ −1 (q(t − L ) − ∧τ (t − L ) − qd − ( K P E + K I ³ E + K D E )) (5)
The error of the time-delay estimation is The simulation results are shown as following:
ζ (t ) = Fˆ (t ) − F (t ) = F (t − L) − F (t ) (6)
Combine (1), (2) and (6), we can get
E + KP E + KI ³ E = ζ (7)
When L is small enough, the error of the system is
E + KP E + KI ³ E = 0 (8)

388

Figure 5. The tracking trajectory of each joint.
From the simulation results shown above, we can see
that both PID and TED-iPIDs can reach a good control
effect. They all show good angel tracking performances and
produce proper drive torque of each joint.
However, there isn’t any clear relation between the three
coefficients to help adjust PID. Compared with the
traditional PID controller, TDE-iPIDs is much easier to get
its parameters.
VI. CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVE
This paper proposes a 6DOF upper-limb powered
exoskeleton , building its kinematics based on D-H matrix
and does the forward and inverse kinematics validation.
Then, a virtual prototype is established. Combined with
it, this paper carries out the TDE-iPIDs controller to do
simulation, using MATLAB/SimMechanics. From the
simulation results, the superiority of TDE-iPIDs is shown, it
can pick up the input signal well and much easier to get its
control parameters.
However, using the time delay method to estimate the
unmodeling F is not so precise. So, it is still necessary to
find an appropriate way to compensate the error of the time
delay estimation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was partially supported by the International
Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China
(2015DFA01710), by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (61304077), by the 11th Jiangsu
Province Six talent peaks of high level talents
(2014_ZBZZ_005), and by the Jiangsu Province ‘Project
Blue: young academic leaders’(2014).

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