Sloshing Control in Tilting Phases of the Pouring Process

We propose a control design scheme that aims to prevent undesirable liquid outpouring and suppress sloshing during the forward and backward tilting phases of the pouring process, for the case of liquid containers carried by manipulators. The proposed scheme combines a partial inverse dynamics controller with a PID controller, tuned with the use of a “metaheuristic" search algorithm. The “metaheuristic" search algorithm tunes the PID controller based on simulation results of the plant-s linearization around the operating point corresponding to the critical tilting angle, where outpouring initiates. Liquid motion is modeled using the well-known pendulumtype model. However, the proposed controller does not require measurements of the liquid-s motion within the tank.

Authors:

• Maria P. Tzamtzi
• Fotis N. Koumboulis

Keywords:

• Robotic systems
• Controller design
• Sloshingsuppression
• Metaheuristic optimization.

References:

[1] K. Yano, S. Higashikawa and K. Terashima, "Motion control of liquid
container considering an inclined transfer path," Control Engineering
Practice, vol. 10, pp. 465-472, 2002.
[2] K. Yano and K. Terashima, "Robust liquid container transfer control for
complete sloshing suppression," IEEE Trans. on Control Systems
Technology, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 483-493, 2001.
[3] K. Terashima, M, Hamaguchi and K. Yamaura, "Modeling and input
shaping control of liquid vibration for an automated pouring system," in
Proc. of the 35th Conf. on Decision and Control, Kobe, Japan, 1996, pp.
4844-4850.
[4] K. Yano, T. Toda and K. Terashima, "Sloshing suppression control of
automatic pouring robot by hybrid shape approach," in Proc. of the 40th
IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, Orlando, Florida, USA, 2001, pp.
1328-1333.
[5] K. Terashima and K. Yano, "Sloshing analysis and suppression control
of tilting-type automatic pouring machine," Control Engineering
Practice, vol. 9, pp. 607-620, 2001.
[6] M.P. Tzamtzi, F.N. Koumboulis, N.D. Kouvakas, G.E. Panagiotakis, "A
Simulated Annealing Controller for Sloshing Suppression in Liquid
Transfer", in Proc. of the 14th Med. Conf. on Control and Automation,
Italy, 2006.
[7] M.P. Tzamtzi, F.N. Koumboulis, "A Two Stage Robot Control for
Liquid Transfer", 12th IEEE Conf. on Emerging Techn. and Factory
Autom., Patras, Greece, 2007, pp. 1324-1333.
[8] F.N. Koumboulis, M.P. Tzamtzi, "A metaheuristic approach for
controller design of multivariable processes", 12th IEEE Conf. on
Emerging Techn. and Factory Autom., Patras, Greece, 2007, pp. 1429-
1432.
[9] B. Yao, W.B. Gao, S.P. Chan and M. Cheng, "VSC coordinated control
of two manipulator arms in the presence of environmental constraints",
IEEE Trans. Automat. Contr., vol. 37, pp. 1806-1812, 1992.