Development of Model Predictive Control (MPC) trajectory tracking formulations for soft tissue robotics.
Investigator: Prof. Allgöwer
The main focus of this project is on the development of new MPC schemes for trajectory tracking control problems arising in soft tissue robotics. In particular, this encompasses the development of schemes that deal with trajectory constraints instead of state constraints and which provide a robust performance capable of handling the heterogeneity of soft tissue. The approach, which we will pursue in this project, models the heterogeneous tissue properties in a probabilistic way. The intended problem formulation leads to specific system classes, which allow the development of efficient methods for the solution of the resulting optimization problem which has to be repeatedly solved online within the MPC controller. Due to the inherent flexibility of MPC schemes, the developed methods can also be used for problems with similar constraints as in soft tissue robotics.