Optimization and Systems Theory Seminar
Friday, November 16, 2001, 11.00-12.00, Room 3721, Lindstedtsv. 25


Henrik Rehbinder
Division of Optimization and Systems Theory
Department of Mathematics
KTH
E-mail: henrikr@math.kth.se

State estimation for nonlinear robotic systems

In my thesis, two different control theoretic topics are studied, nonlinear observer design for orientation estimation and control design under limited communication. The specific problems originate from control of mobile robots in difficult terrain, especially walking robots. Different ensembles of rate gyros, accelerometers, inclinometers and computer vision are investigated.

The seminar will focus on different aspects of nonlinear observer design for the specific orientation estimation problems that the thesis is concerned with. Particular attention will be paid to how the observer design problem is tied to the rigid body kinematics representation. It will be demonstrated how rate gyros and accelerometers can be fused in a particularly simple way by using the geometric structure of the underlying system. This is compared to a more standard high-gain observer that does not use this structure. The geometric way of viewing these problems is pushed further in a study of computer vision where it is shown how observability of linear systems is naturally generalized to an implicit output system evolving on $SO(3)$. Finally, some implementational issues regarding the computational constraints of computer vision is considered.

Calendar of seminars
Last update: November 8, 2001 by Anders Forsgren, anders.forsgren@math.kth.se.