The impact of AI on engineering design procedures for dynamical systems

Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving transformative changes across numerous fields, revolutionizing conventional processes and creating new opportunities for innovation. The development of mechatronic systems is undergoing a similar transformation. Over the past decade, modeling, simulation, and optimization techniques have become integral to the design process, paving the way for the adoption of AI-based methods. In this paper, we examine the potential for integrating AI into the engineering design process, using the V-model from the VDI guideline 2206, considered the state-of-the-art in product design, as a foundation. We identify and classify AI methods based on their suitability for specific stages within the engineering product design workflow. Furthermore, we present a series of application examples where AI-assisted design has been successfully implemented by the authors. These examples, drawn from research projects within the DFG Priority Program \emph{SPP~2353: Daring More Intelligence - Design Assistants in Mechanics and Dynamics}, showcase a diverse range of applications across mechanics and mechatronics, including areas such as acoustics and robotics.

Efficient Avoidance of Ellipsoidal Obstacles with Model Predictive Control for Mobile Robots and Vehicles

In real-world applications of mobile robots, collision avoidance is of critical importance. Typically, global motion planning in constrained environments is addressed through high-level control schemes. However, additionally integrating local collision avoidance into robot motion control offers significant advantages. For instance, it reduces the reliance on heuristics and conservatism that can arise from a two-stage approach separating local collision avoidance and control. Moreover, using model predictive control (MPC), a robot's full potential can be harnessed by considering jointly local collision avoidance, the robot's dynamics, and actuation constraints. In this context, the present paper focuses on obstacle avoidance for wheeled mobile robots, where both the robot's and obstacles' occupied volumes are modeled as ellipsoids. To this end, a computationally efficient overlap test, that works for arbitrary ellipsoids, is conducted and novelly integrated into the MPC framework. We propose a particularly efficient implementation tailored to robots moving in the plane. The functionality of the proposed obstacle-avoiding MPC is demonstrated for two exemplary types of kinematics by means of simulations. A hardware experiment using a real-world wheeled mobile robot shows transferability to reality and real-time applicability. The general computational approach to ellipsoidal obstacle avoidance can also be applied to other robotic systems and vehicles as well as three-dimensional scenarios.

Data-Driven Predictive Control of Nonholonomic Robots Based on a Bilinear Koopman Realization: Data Does Not Replace Geometry

Advances in machine learning and the growing trend towards effortless data generation in real-world systems has led to an increasing interest for data-inferred models and data-based control in robotics. It seems appealing to govern robots solely based on data, bypassing the traditional, more elaborate pipeline of system modeling through first-principles and subsequent controller design. One promising data-driven approach is the Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) for control-affine systems, a system class which contains many vehicles and machines of immense practical importance including, e.g., typical wheeled mobile robots. EDMD can be highly data-efficient, computationally inexpensive, can deal with nonlinear dynamics as prevalent in robotics and mechanics, and has a sound theoretical foundation rooted in Koopman theory. On this background, this present paper examines how EDMD models can be integrated into predictive controllers for nonholonomic mobile robots. In addition to the conventional kinematic mobile robot, we also cover the complete data-driven control pipeline - from data acquisition to control design - when the robot is not treated in terms of first-order kinematics but in a second-order manner, allowing to account for actuator dynamics. Using only real-world measurement data, it is shown in both simulations and hardware experiments that the surrogate models enable high-precision predictive controllers in the studied cases. However, the findings raise significant concerns about purely data-centric approaches that overlook the underlying geometry of nonholonomic systems, showing that, for nonholonomic systems, some geometric insight seems necessary and cannot be easily compensated for with large amounts of data.

Cooperative Distributed MPC via Decentralized Real-Time Optimization: Implementation Results for Robot Formations

Distributed model predictive control (DMPC) is a flexible and scalable feedback control method applicable to a wide range of systems. While stability analysis of DMPC is quite well understood, there exist only limited implementation results for realistic applications involving distributed computation and networked communication. This article approaches formation control of mobile robots via a cooperative DMPC scheme. We discuss the implementation via decentralized optimization algorithms. To this end, we combine the alternating direction method of multipliers with decentralized sequential quadratic programming to solve the underlying optimal control problem in a decentralized fashion. Our approach only requires coupled subsystems to communicate and does not rely on a central coordinator. Our experimental results showcase the efficacy of DMPC for formation control and they demonstrate the real-time feasibility of the considered algorithms.

Time-Optimal Handover Trajectory Planning for Aerial Manipulators based on Discrete Mechanics and Complementarity Constraints

Planning a time-optimal trajectory for aerial robots is critical in many drone applications, such as rescue missions and package delivery, which have been widely researched in recent years. However, it still involves several challenges, particularly when it comes to incorporating special task requirements into the planning as well as the aerial robot's dynamics. In this work, we study a case where an aerial manipulator shall hand over a parcel from a moving mobile robot in a time-optimal manner. Rather than setting up the approach trajectory manually, which makes it difficult to determine the optimal total travel time to accomplish the desired task within dynamic limits, we propose an optimization framework, which combines discrete mechanics and complementarity constraints (DMCC) together. In the proposed framework, the system dynamics is constrained with the discrete variational Lagrangian mechanics that provides reliable estimation results also according to our experiments. The handover opportunities are automatically determined and arranged based on the desired complementarity constraints. Finally, the performance of the proposed framework is verified with numerical simulations and hardware experiments with our self-designed aerial manipulators.

Model Predictive Control of Non-Holonomic Vehicles: Beyond Differential-Drive

Non-holonomic vehicles are of immense practical value and increasingly subject to automation. However, controlling them accurately, e.g., when parking, is known to be challenging for automatic control methods, including model predictive control (MPC). Combining results from MPC theory and sub-Riemannian geometry in the form of homogeneous nilpotent system approximations, this paper proposes a comprehensive, ready-to-apply design procedure for MPC controllers to steer controllable, driftless non-holonomic vehicles into given setpoints. It can be ascertained that the resulting controllers nominally asymptotically stabilize the setpoint for a large-enough prediction horizon. The design procedure is exemplarily applied to four vehicles, including the kinematic car and a differentially driven mobile robot with up to two trailers. The controllers use a non-quadratic cost function tailored to the non-holonomic kinematics. Novelly, for the considered example vehicles, it is proven that a quadratic cost employed in an otherwise similar controller is insufficient to reliably asymptotically stabilize the closed loop. Since quadratic costs are the conventional choice in control, this highlights the relevance of the findings. To the knowledge of the authors, it is the first time that MPC controllers of the proposed structure are applied to non-holonomic vehicles beyond very simple ones, in particular (partly) on hardware.