620
4, OCTOBER 2017
Continuous Robust Control for Series Elastic
Actuator With Unknown Payload Parameters
and External Disturbances
Meng Wang, Lei Sun, Member, IEEE, Wei Yin, Shuai Dong, and Jingtai Liu, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, the torque tracking control problem
for a class of series elastic actuators (SEAs) in the presence
of unknown payload parameters and external disturbances is
investigated. The uncertainties/disturbances rejection problem
for SEAs is addressed from the view of a continuous nonlinear
robust control development. Specifically, based on the analysis
of a nonlinear SEA, the generic dynamics of SEA systems is
described and a novel nonlinear control framework for SEAs
is constructed. Then a RISE (robust integral of the sign of the
error)-based second-order filter is introduced to synthesize the
control law. Moreover, the control performance is theoretically
ensured by Lyapunov analysis. Finally, some experimental results
are included to demonstrate the superior performance of the
proposed control method, in terms of transient response and
robustness.
Index Terms—Nonlinear robust control, torque control, series
elastic actuator.
I. I NTRODUCTION
W ITH advantages of intrinsic safety, accurate force/
torque output, low impedance, etc., series elastic ac-
tuators (SEAs) [1], [2] have shown great potential applica-
tions in different human-robot interaction (HRI) systems such
as rehabilitation robots, exoskeletons, co-robotics and so on
[3]−[7]. The high-performance control design for SEAs is
still a challenging problem, particularly in the presence of
unknown payload parameters and external disturbances, which
are common in HRI systems. To deal with the challenge, many
works have been conducted in the last decades. The traditional
cascade proportional-integral-differential (PID) control, with
model-independence and simple implementation, is a widely
used approach for SEA-based systems [8]−[11]. Pratt et al.
[8] use an inner position control loop nested in an outer torque
control loop to construct a cascade PID controller. Later,
Manuscript received May 30, 2015; accepted September 11, 2016. This
work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China(61573198), in part by the National High-tech R&D Program of China
(863 Program) (2012AA041403). Recommended by Associate Editor Zhijun
Li. (Corresponding author: Lei Sun.)
Citation: M. Wang, L. Sun, W. Yin, S. Dong, and J. T. Liu, “Continuous
robust control for series elastic actuator with unknown payload parameters
and external disturbances,” IEEE/CAA J. of Autom. Sinica, vol. 4, no. 4, pp.
620−627, Oct. 2017.
The authors are with the Institute of Robotics and Automatic
Information System, and also the Tianjin Key Laboratory of
Intelligent Robotics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China (e-
mail: sunl@nankai.edu.cn; wmkevin@mail.nankai.edu.cn; blackbirdon-
tree@163.com; dongsh@mail.nankai.edu.cn; liujt@nankai.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JAS.2017.7510610
IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO.
Wyeth [9] uses a PI (proportional-integral) velocity control
loop to replace the inner position loop to improve the control
performance. Moreover, based on the passivity theory and
the impedance control theory, the cascade control scheme is
further developed in [10], [11]. In [12], [13], LDOB (linear
disturbance observer)-based control structures are proposed
to compensate for the model errors and plant variations. In
addition, other advanced control methods, such as sliding-
mode control (SMC) [14], [15], model reference adaptive
control (MRAC) [16], neural network based control [17],
H2 -optimal control [18] and rapidly exponentially stabilizing
control Lyapunov function (REL-CLF) based controllers [19],
[20] have been applied for SEAs. Although the above control
approaches achieve good performance, the common ground
shared in those works is that the elastic mechanism of the
SEAs is regarded as a linear spring, i.e., the torque generated
by SEAs is proportional to the position of the motor with
respect to the payload (we call such traditional SEAs as
linear SEAs hereafter). However, in order to achieve higher
energy density and better bionic characteristics, the mechanical
structure of SEAs tends to be more and more complex and it
leads to nonlinear SEAs which are also referred to variable
impedance/stiffness actuators (VIAs/VSAs) [21]−[24]. The
performance of the methods oriented to linear SEAs can be
degraded in the case of nonlinear ones.
In recent years, a variety of different solutions for nonlinear
SEAs have been proposed, such as cascade PID control [25],
[26], LDOB-based control [27], [28], optimal control [29],
[30], sliding mode control [31], and so on. The control
performance of the aforementioned control laws is highlighted
by experimental or simulation results, whereas most of them
are developed with little consideration of the uncertainties in
HRI systems, i.e., the variations of payload dynamics and
external disturbances. When SEAs are applied to robots that
interact with human frequently, these systems are characterized
by the presence of the “human in the loop” so that the system
usually suffers uncertain human dynamics. Moreover, humans
typically change their dynamics in response to the environment
and depending on the specific tasks. The variations of the
payload dynamics can be sufficiently large, which means
that the payload parameters are totally unknown and can
not be used for controller design. For example leg dynamics
dramatically changes between the swing and the stance phase.
Also damping and stiffness can be increased by muscle co-
contraction, e.g., when we want to make a precise positioning
or when we hold heavy loads. Moreover, external disturbances
WANG et al.: CONTINUOUS ROBUST CONTROL FOR SERIES ELASTIC ACTUATOR WITH · · ·
widely exist in all practical systems and bring adverse effects
on performance and even stability of control systems. It
would be dangerous for humans in HRI systems with less
consideration of above uncertainties. In [25], [26], the cascade
PID controller which can be seen as a simple and effective
approach to complex systems is used to control nonlinear
SEAs. But there is a lack of theoretical convergence analysis.
The LDOB-based methodology is presented in [27], [28].
The nonlinear functions describing the nonlinear deflection-
torque relations are linearized. Then the controllers specific
to the linearized systems are designed and the LDOBs are
constructed to compensate for the model errors. The passivity
of the system is ensured, making the controller stable even
in the presence of unknown payload parameters, however, the
main limitation of the method is that only the local stability
of the controllers is guaranteed. Specific to particular tasks,
optimal control approaches are presented in [29], [30]. But
these methods, with the need of payload dynamics, are not
suitable for HRI systems. In our previous works, a sliding-
mode controller is proposed [31], but some disturbances, such
as the model errors and the real friction, are not considered
and the chattering caused by the sliding-mode control scheme
may induce some discomforts to humans.
A new class of nonlinear controller, the robust integral of
the sign of the error (RISE) control structure, is proposed in
[32] and further developed in [33]−[35]. The method shows
strong robustness with respect to system uncertainties and
external disturbances, which depends on the integral of the
sign of the error term. Compared with traditional sliding-mode
control approach, another advantage of the method is that it
reduces the chattering behavior, which makes it more attractive
in practical applications such as mechanical and electrical
systems [34], [35]. Typically, the asymptotic convergence
would be achieved by controllers, which maintains either
discontinuous feedback or discontinuous derivatives in the
presence of absolutely unknown disturbances. Compared with
the discontinues control method, the RISE design eliminates
the drawback of infinite bandwidth and infinitesimal switching
time due to the raised-order property (i.e., the integral of the
sign of the error). And in this paper, we will develop the
modified RISE controller to deal with the uncertainties in HRI
systems.
Based on the foregoing analysis, we will focus on the torque
control of SEAs used in HRI systems. Specifically, in view
of a state transformation, a nonlinear control framework for
SEA torque control is proposed, from which the relationship
between the motion of the payload and the control system
can be obtained. Then we construct a modified RISE control
law to compensate for the effect caused by the motion of the
payload and the controller is not associated with any payload
parameters (inertia, gravity and so on). A new Lyapunov
function is proposed to guarantee the close-loop dynamics to
be exponentially stable for sufficiently smooth reference trajec-
tories. Finally, some real-time experimental results for various
interaction cases are included to validate the performance of
the proposed control approach. The main contributions of the
paper are summarized as follows:
1) A nonlinear control framework is described and applied
621
to SEA torque control. The framework is suitable for both
linear and nonlinear SEAs, which implies that it is more
generic.
2) The designed robust controller takes a continuous ex-
pression, which makes it more practical. The controller is
robust against unknown payload parameters and external dis-
turbances.
3) Experimental results illustrate that the proposed con-
troller can achieve better control performance than the existing
methods in a variety of interaction situations and show satis-
factory robustness.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. A
nonlinear control framework for SEA torque control is pro-
posed in Section II. We present the controller development
and the stability analysis in Section III. Section IV exhibits the
hardware experiments to illustrate the superior performance of
the proposed approach. The main work of this paper is finally
summarized in Section V.
II. A N ONLINEAR C ONTROL F RAMEWORK FOR SEA
T ORQUE C ONTROL
A. Preliminary Work
The nonlinear SEA studied in this paper which is inspired by
Wolf and Hirzinger [22] is shown in Fig. 1. The SEA mainly
consists of a DC servo motor and an elastic component. The
elasticity comes from three compressed springs. The springs
will be compressed when a relative displacement between the
payload and the motor is induced, thus the roller rolls along
the circular surface. According to Fig. 1, the generated torque
of the SEA can be worked out as follows:
cϕ
sin θ = (1)
R−r
∆y = (R − r)(1 − cos ϕ) (2)
F = 3ks ∆y (3)
τSEA = F c tan θ = 3ks c(R − r)(tan θ − sin θ) (4)
Fig. 1. Actuator setup.
where ϕ represents the relative displacement between the
motor and the payload; R, r denote the radius of the circular
surface and the cam rollers, respectively; c is the radius relative
to the joint axis the cam rollers roll on; θ is the angle of
cam rollers roll along the circular surface; ks denotes the
spring stiffness constant; ∆y represents the displacement of
the cam rollers in the direction of the joint axis; F is the force
generated by the spring calculated by Hooke’s law and τSEA
is the centering torque generated by SEA. The parameters of
622
the SEA are shown in Table I and the result of the model
verification is shown in Fig. 21 . As shown in the result, there
exists a small hysteresis which may have caused by the friction
and the sensor hysteresis. However, the error between the
theoretical values and the values read from the torque sensor is
less than ±0.2 Nm and it can be concluded that the equations
(1)−(4) are valid. Moreover, the property of a class of SEAs
including both linear and nonlinear ones can be summarized
and stated as follows.
Property 1: There is a bijection f (ϕ) describing the rela-
tionship between the generated torque of the SEA and the
position of the motor with respect to the payload. Moreover,
f (ϕ) ∈ C2 .
TABLE I
I DENTIFIED PARAMETERS
Parameter Value
ks 13600 N/m
c 0.018 m
R 0.020 m
r 0.005 m
Fig. 2. Model verification of the nonlinear SEA.
B. Nonlinear Control Framework
A schematic diagram of SEA systems is depicted in Fig. 3,
from which the following generic dynamics can be obtained:
 value/trajectory x1,d (t). For the sake of analysis, the follow-
 τM = JM θ̈M + cM θ̇M + τSEA + dM
 ing assumptions are given here by considering the practical
τSEA = f (ϕ) = JL (θL )θ̈L + CL (θ̇L , θL ) + dL (5)


ϕ = θM − θL
where JM , cM represent the inertia and damping coefficient
of the geared motor, respectively; JL (θL ) is the inertia of
the payload, CL (θ̇L , θL ) contains the centrifugal, coriolis and
gravity forces of the payload; θM (t) is the motor position;
θL (t) is the payload position; τSEA (t) denotes the torque gen-
erated by SEA; dM (t), dL (t) are regarded as the disturbances
including all other uncertain terms in the dynamics (such as
model errors and friction) of the motor side and the payload
side, respectively; τM (t) is the actuating torque provided by
motor. f (ϕ) denotes the function describing the relationship
between the generated torque and the relative position of the
1 The parameters identification has been completed in our previous work,
interested readers are recommended to [36] for more details.
IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2017
motor and the payload. Here, f (ϕ) is considered to be a more
generalized function as (1)−(4) instead of the traditional linear
function.
Fig. 3. Schematic representation of SEA systems.
Based on Property 1, the SEA torque control problem can
be converted to the relative position control problem, which
can be mathematically summarized as follows:
ϕ(t) → ϕd (t) ⇐⇒ τSEA (t) → τSEA,d (t) (6)
where ϕd (t) denotes the desired relative position trajectory of
motor and payload calculated by the desired torque trajectory
τSEA,d (t) through f −1 (τSEA ). Here, the reference trajectory
ϕd (t) is set to be sufficiently smooth such that ϕd (t) ∈ C3 .
In this paper, the SEAs are mainly considered to be applied
to robots that interact with humans frequently, and the vari-
ations of the payload parameters can be sufficiently large in
these systems [2]−[5]. Motivated by the desire to make the
controller be insensitive to these changes, the dynamic func-
tions are operated as follows: let x1 = ϕ, x2 = θ̇M = ẋ1 + θ̇L ,
be defined, the original SEA dynamics (1) can be rearranged
into (
ẋ1 = x2 − θ̇L
(7)
JM ẋ2 = τM − f (x1 ) − cM x2 − dM .
After the transformation, the effect caused by the motion of
the payload on the system becomes more clear and controllers
can be designed to compensate for that directly without
consideration of the payload parameters. Consequently, a
novel nonlinear control framework is obtained and the SEA
torque control problem can be stated as follows: design a
controller τM (t) to drive the system state x1 (t) to the desired
application and physical constraints.
Assumption 1: The disturbances satisfy the following con-
dition dM (t), d˙M (t), d¨M (t) ∈ L∞ .
Assumption 2: The motion signals of the payload satisfy the
(3) (4)
following condition θ̈L (t), θL (t), θL (t) ∈ L∞ .
Remark 1: For SEA systems, impacts or step functions may
happen during the interactions between humans and robots.
However, it is noticed that humans always interact with the
end-effector of the robots, thus these sudden changes should
only be generated by the payload side. The elastic component
which is in series with the motor could soften the effect before
the impacts are transmitted to the motor side. Hence, the
disturbance of the motor side dM will be smooth enough.
For HRI systems, the motion of the payload side is mainly
dependent on humans. The explosive power of humans could
be large enough, but with the limitations of the biomechanics
WANG et al.: CONTINUOUS ROBUST CONTROL FOR SERIES ELASTIC ACTUATOR WITH · · · 623

constraints, from the conclusion of [12], the bandwidth up B. Stability Analysis

to the frequency range of human motions is about 4−8 Hz. To facilitate the subsequent analysis, the auxiliary signal
Hence, it is natural to have Assumption 2 since human motions r(t) is defined as follows:
in the real world are operating in a region whose bounds are
known and often positive. r = ė2 + α2 e2 . (14)
According to (12), it can be derived:
III. C ONTROLLER D ESIGN AND A NALYSIS ...
A. Control Law Development ṙ = e + α1 ë + α2 ė1 + ṙf . (15)
The control design for the SEA should account for two main Multiplying both sides with JM and substituting (11), (12)
issues: 1) the compensation for the motion of the payload and into the resulting equation, it can be obtained that
2) external disturbances. To quantify the tracking objective, a ...
JM ṙ = u̇um − d˙M − JM θ L + JM (α1 ë + α2 ė1 )
tracking error denoted by e(t) is defined as (16)
+ JM [−(k + 1)r − rf + e1 − e1f ] + e1 − e1 .
e = x1 − x1,d . (8)
In... order to simplify the notation, the terms d˙M and
Then, the dynamics of the error system is described as JM θ L are represented as a function of time t and ac-
follows: cording to assumptions from Section II, we know that
(
ė = x̃2 both of them are bounded signals. Then, by introducing
N (x1 , ẋ1 , ẍ1 , e1f , rf , r, t) as an auxiliary function to include
JM x̃˙ 2 = τM − f (x1 ) − cM x2 − JM ẍ1,d − dM − JM θ̈L
(9) all the uncertain parts in the above dynamic equation, it can
where x̃2 (t) = x2 (t)− θ̇L (t)− ẋ1,d . Thus, the proposed control be derived that
law is a combination of two parts, um to compensate for JM ṙ = N − JM (k + 1)r + u̇um − e1 . (17)
the measurable nominal parts and uum to compensate for the
unmeasurable variables. The function N (x1 , ẋ1 , ẍ1 , e1f , rf , r, t) is defined as
...
τM (t) = um (t) + uum (t) (10) N = − d˙M − JM θ L + JM (α1 ë + α2 ė)
(18)
+ JM [−rf + e1 − e1f ] + e1
where um (t) = f (x1 (t)) + cM x2 (t) + JM ẍ1,d (t) and uum (t)
is to be designed later. It can be obtained by substituting (10) and the last term −e1 (t) is separated from the grouped N (·)
into (9): ( to cancel the cross terms in the stability analysis and will be
ė = x̃2 used in the subsequent part.
(11) Integrated with (13) and (18), the ultimate close-loop error
JM x̃˙ 2 = uum − JM θ̈L − dM .
dynamics can be derived as
For the control design based on the close-loop dynamics
in (11), it is noticed that, not only the disturbance term of JM ṙ = Nd + Ñ + (k + 1)rf − 2βsign(e2 )
(19)
the motor side, but also the acceleration of the payload side − JM (k + 1)r − e1
need to be compensated. In order to deal with these terms,
where auxiliary functions Nd (t) and Ñ (·) have the following
the following second-order filter is designed using the system
form:
states that work in cascade with the revised RISE structure,
which is depicted as follows: Nd = N (x1,d , ẋ1,d , ẍ1,d , 0, 0, 0, t)
e1 = ė + α1 e Ñ = N − Nd + κ(|rf | + |e2 |). (20)
ė1f = −α2 e1f + rf In this way, N (·) is split into two terms, Ñ (·) and Nd (t), in
rf = −(k + 1)e2 + p which Nd (t) can be upper-bounded by a constant and Ñ (·) can
e2 = e1 + e1f be controlled by a state-error-dependent term. By applying the
mean value theorem, an inequality for Ñ (·) can be described
ṗ = −(k + 1)α2 e2 − rf + e1 − e1f (12) as
where α1 , α2 , k are positive constant gains. It can be found w k)kw
|Ñ | ≤ ρ(kw wk (21)
that, the inputs for the filters are the measurable signals e(t)
where k · k denotes the 2-norm of vectors and w ∈ R5
and ė(t), thus the filter’s outputs e1 (t), e1f (t) and rf (t) are
represents a group vector of the system errors and the filtered
all measurable and can be utilized in the controller.
errors as
Based on (12), the control input uum (t) can be designed as
w (t) = [e, e1 , e1f , rf , r]T (22)
follows:
and ρ(·) denotes a positive non-decreasing function. From As-
u̇um = κ(|rf | + |e2 |) + (k + 1)rf − 2βsign(e2 ). (13)
sumptions 1 and 2, the following inequalities can be developed
where β and κ denote a positive constant. Although the
kNd k ≤ δ1 , kṄd k ≤ δ2 (23)
derivative of uum (t) is discontinuous on e2 = 0, it is clear
that uum (t) maintains continuity for all the variables in their where δ1 , δ2 are two positive constants and the conclusions of
defined domains. (23) will be utilized to prove the following theorem.
624 IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2017

Theorem 1: The proposed controller (10), guarantees that where Kw = 1/2 min {JM , α1 − 1/2, α2 − 1/2, 1}. Then it
the control error e(t), converges to zero exponentially, in the can be concluded that
sense that 1
p V̇ ≤ −Kw kw w k2 − α2 β|e2 | − (Kw − ρ2 (kw w k2 )
w k)kw
1 4JM k
ke(t)k ≤ V (0)/λ1 exp(− Kv t) (24)
2 1
≤ −Kv V − (Kw − ρ2 (kw w k2 )
w k)kw (31)
where λ1 and Kv are two positive constants and V (·) is a 4JM k
positive definite function that will be designed later, provided where Kv = min{Kw /2, α √2 β/(2β +kNd k∞ )}. Considering a
the gains introduced in (12) and (13) are chosen according to set Ω = {w w k ≤ ρ−1 (2 JM Kw )}, in which the inequality
w |kw
the sufficient conditions in the following: Kw − ρ2 (kw
w k)/4JM k ≥ 0 is satisfied. It can be derived
1 V̇ ≤ −Kv V, for w ∈ Ω. (32)
α1 >
2
1 Multiplying both sides of (32) by exp(Kv t) yields
α2 >
2 V̇ exp(Kv t) + Kv exp (Kv t) ≤ 0 (33)
1
β > δ1 + δ2 which leads to
α2
ρ2 (kw
w k) V exp(Kv t) − V (0) ≤ 0 for w ∈ Ω (34)
k> . (25)
4JM Kw In consequence, if the control gain k satisfies the condition
in which Kw is a positive constant that will be defined in the given in (25), it is concluded that
following analysis. p 1
Proof: Let V (t), which is positive definite, be defined in |e(t)| ≤ kww k ≤ V (0)/λ1 exp(− Kv t) (35)
2
the following form: ¥
1 1 1 1
V = JM r2 + e2 + e21 + e21f IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULT
2 2 2 2
1 2 In this section, some actual experiments are conducted on
+ rf + 2β|e2 | − Nd e2 . (26)
2 a self-built single-SEA-joint robot to further verify the actual
According to (23) and (25), the following inequality can be control performance of the proposed approach. In particular,
obtained the superior performance of the new method is exhibited by
comparing it with the traditional cascade-PID controller.
w k + β|e2 | ≤ V ≤ λ2 kw
λ1 kw w k + (2β + kNd k∞ )|e2 | (27)
where λ1 and λ2 are set as A. Experimental Configuration
1 1 The SEA experiment setup is shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen
λ1 = min{1, JM }, λ2 = max{1, JM }. (28) as a plane rotatory robot and the rotation axis is perpendicular
2 2
to the ground. Two encoders are installed to measure the
Taking the time derivative of (26), substituting (12) and (19)
angular displacement signals of the motor side and the payload
into the resulting formula and making some mathematical
side, respectively. The velocity signals are obtained by doing
arrangements lead to
numerical difference operations on the angle signals. The SEA
V̇ = r[Nd + Ñ + (k + 1)rf − 2βsign(e2 ) − JM (k + 1)r − e1 ] system is driven by a Maxon DC servo motor. For real-time
+ e(e1 − α1 e) + e1 ė1 + e1f (rf − α2 e1f ) implementation, the control period is set as 1 ms. The control
algorithm runs in the environment of Linux/Xenomai operating
+ rf [−rf − (k + 1)r + e1 − e1f ]
system to ensure real-time control and the control algorithm is
+ 2βsgn(e2 )ė2 − Ṅd e2 − Nd ė2 . (29) implemented in C programming language. An FPGA control
board is used to collect data from the sensors and convey
Note that r(t) = ė2 (t) + α2 e2 (t), then the following
the control commands, generated by the PC-104, to the servo
manipulations are carried out
actuators controlling the motor.
V̇ = − JM r2 − JM kr2 − α2 e21f − rf2 − α2 e21 − α1 e2
+ ee1 − 2α2 β|e2 | + α2 Nd e2 − Ṅd e2 + rÑ B. Experimental Results and Analysis
1 We have implemented three groups of experiments to com-
≤ − JM r2 − JM kr2 − α2 e21f − rf2 − (α1 − )e2 prehensively validate the performance of the proposed method
2
1 2 in the presence of three common human-robot interaction
− (α2 − )e1 − α2 β|e2 | + |r||Ñ | cases. Briefly speaking, in the first group, the payload is free
2
1 to rotate at the beginning, then it is caught by hands which
≤ − JM r2 − JM kr2 − α2 e21f − rf2 − (α1 − )e2 induces a collision and the payload is forced to stop. In the
2
1 2 second group, the payload is forced to stop at first, then it is
− (α2 − )e1 − α2 β|e2 | + |r|ρ(kw w k)kw wk
2 released to rotate around the axis freely. In the third group, the
1 payload is excited by hand and the zero-impedance control is
≤ − 2Kw kww k2 − α2 β|e2 | + ρ2 (kw w k2 (30)
w k)kw
4JM k used to test the performance of the proposed controller.
WANG et al.: CONTINUOUS ROBUST CONTROL FOR SERIES ELASTIC ACTUATOR WITH · · · 625

Fig. 4. The SEA experiment test bed.

In all three sets of experiments, the cascade-PID controller

is used as the comparative approach (note that the cascade
control method is widely used to control linear and nonlinear
SEAs [8]−[11], [24], [25]; hence, it is chosen here for com-
parison). Throughout the subsequent experiments, the control
parameters for our method are chosen as
α1 = 15, α2 = 10, β = 5
k = 100, kt = 0.5.
For the comparative cascade PID control method, the control
gains for outer loop and inner loop are selected, after careful
tuning, as
kop = 20, koi = 8, kod = 0.5
kip = 5, kii = 3, kid = 0.
It is worth mentioning that the torque data in the following
experiment results is directly calculated through (1)−(4).
Experiment Group 1: Catch. In the first group, the desired
torque is set as 0.2 Nm, i.e., τd (t) = 0.2 Nm. The obtained Fig. 5. Experiment results for Group 1.
experimental results are shown in Fig. 5. From the result, it can
be obtained that, for both controllers, the generated torque is
driven to reach the desired value accurately. However, it can
be seen that the proposed method has a faster convergence
rate without overshoot. Moreover, the impact caused by the
collision is canceled out rapidly and hardly influences the
output torque for the proposed control law, and at the same
time, the overall control performance is well guaranteed. But
the variations of the payload side leads to the degraded
performance of the cascade-PID controller in the sense that
it takes much more time for the cascade-PID method to make
the generated torque recover to the desired value. It can
be concluded that, the proposed approach achieves a better
control performance in terms of both transient response and
robustness. It is noticed that, for the two controllers, the
collisions do not happen at the same point, because it is hard
to guarantee the strict synchronization in the real experiments.
Experiment Group 2: Release. For the second group, the
desired torque is still set as τd = 2 Nm and the corresponding
experimental results are exhibited in Fig. 6. By observing these
results, it is clear that, at first, the proposed controller makes
Fig. 6. Experiment results for Group 2.
the SEA output torque converge to the desired value fast and
accurately. Then the payload is released to rotate freely, but the
overall control performance is not degraded. The effect caused proposed controller. For the cascade-PID controller, the con-
by the release is much better suppressed and eliminated by the vergence rate is slower and overshoot appears in the result.
626
In addition, the variations of the payload side, to some
extent, degrades the control performance of the cascade-PID
method. Consequently, the proposed approach is better and the
robustness shown from the experimental results is beneficial
since in practical HRI systems, the dynamics of the payload
side is usually different and the variations of that are inevitable.
Experiment Group 3: Zero-impedance control. Zero-
impedance control mode plays an important role in HRI sys-
tems as a special case of torque control. This is an important
characteristic of an SEA joint because it makes it possible
for the joint to work as an ideal friction-free bearing, which
leads the robot be transparent to persons. In this group, the
desired torque is set to zero, i.e. τd = 0, while the end-effector
of the robot is actively perturbed by hand. Fig. 7 records the
experimental results. As shown by the experimental data, the
control error of the proposed controller is less than ±0.03 Nm
and barely noticeable, while the control error of the cascade-
PID controller is much larger (more than ±0.1 Nm). Therefore,
it is evident that the proposed controller has a better ability
to make the actuator maintain the zero-impedance mode and
proves its promising application prospect in HRI systems.
Fig. 7. Experiment results for Group 3.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, based on the proposed control framework,
a practical rise-based control law has been suggested for
a class of SEAs to track the time-varying reference torque
trajectory in the presence of unknown payload parameters and
external disturbances. The proposed controller only requires
very limited knowledge of the payload dynamics and dis-
turbance. The control performance is rigorously guaranteed
with Lyapunov analysis. Experimental results are exhibited to
validate the feasibility and the superior control performance of
the proposed controller. Now, we are building a 3-DOFs robot
which is comprised of three SEA-joints and in our future work,
we will apply the proposed approach to control the robot.
IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA, VOL. 4, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2017
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627
Meng Wang is Ph.D. candidate at Nankai Uni-
versity. He received the B.S. degree in intelligent
science and technology from Nankai University,
Tianjin, China, in 2012. He is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in control theory and control
engineering in the Institute of Robotics and Auto-
matic Information System, Nankai University, Tian-
jin, China. His research interests include flexible-
joint robot and nonlinear control.
Lei Sun is an Associate Professor at Nankai Uni-
versity. He received the B.E. and M.S. degrees in
industry automation from Tianjin University, China,
in 1999 and 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in control
theory and control engineering from Nankai Univer-
sity, China, in 2005. In 2005, he joined Nankai Uni-
versity, where he is currently an Associate Professor
in the College of Computer and Control Engineering.
His research interests include robotics and automatic
control, teleoperation of robots in networks, wireless
sensor network, micro-electro-mechanical systems.
Wei Yin is a Ph.D. candidate at Nankai University.
He received the B.S. degree in intelligent science and
techonology from Nankai University, Tianjin, China,
in 2013. He is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree in control science and control engineering in
the Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information
System, Nankai University, Tianjin, China. His re-
search interests include motion control of robotics
and control of series elastic actuators.
Shuai Dong is a M.S. student at Nankai University.
He received the B.S. degree in electrical automation
from Hangzhou Dianzi University, Zhejiang, China,
in 2014. He is currently working toward the M.S.
degree in control science and control engineering in
the institute of robotics and automatic information
System, Nankai University, Tianjin, China. His re-
search interests include servo control and AGVs.
Jingtai Liu is a Professor at Nankai University.
He received the B.E. and M.S. degree in automa-
tion from Tianjin University, China in 1983 and
1986, and the Ph.D. degree in robotics from Nankai
University, China in 1998. His research interests
include robotics and automatic control, teleoperation
of robots in networks, wireless sensor network,
microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS).