Date of Award

Fall 2020

Project Type

Thesis

Program or Major

Mechanical Engineering

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Se Young Yoon

Second Advisor

May-Win Thein

Third Advisor

Bingxian Mu

Abstract

The use of robots has become more prevalent in the last several decades in many sectors such

as manufacturing, research, and consumer use [18]. With such varying environments and requirements of these robots it has become increasingly important to develop systems capable of adapting

and ensuring safety of the robot and surroundings. This study examines shared control as a method

of obstacle avoidance for mobile robots.

Shared control makes use of multiple control modes to obtain desired properties from each.

This lends a wide range of applications of shared control, from assisted wheelchair operation [37]

to autonomous vehicle navigation [10]. Shared control allows for highly versatile controllers and

enables easier interfacing with humans.

In this thesis we propose control strategies for two mobile robots: a kinematic non-holonomic

wheeled robot and a dynamic quad-rotor. Lyapunov analysis is used to show stability of the systems while accounting for shared control switching. With the shared control architecture, it is

proven the robots always avoid collision with obstacles. The theoretical analysis is validated with

experiments which show promising results and motivate shared control as a viable solution for safe

navigation in other systems.

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