Control Barrier Functions for Manipulator Control

Balancing information and expected rewards during swarm foraging

Our team explored the usage of control barrier functions (CBF) for ensuring safe movement of a robotic manipulator while following a specified trajectory. CBFs are powerful tools for enforcing state constraints on dynamical systems, and can be used to minimally modify nominal controllers to ensure both desired motion and safety. We used CBFs to enforce singularity avoidance, as well as prevent joints from rotating past safe positions. In addition to testing in simulation, we used ROS2 to test our approach on a real-world Dynamixel OpenMANIPULATOR-X 4-DOF manipulator. Check out more technical details in the below report!

Experimental Setup
Figure 1: Dynamixel Arm
Figure 2: Trajectory Following without Singularity Avoidance
Figure 3: Trajectory Following with Minimal Singularity Avoidance
Figure 4: Trajectory Following with Aggressive Singularity Avoidance