MPC Applied to Motion Control of an Underactuated Brachiation Robot

In this paper we present the application of the nonlinear model based predictive control to the motion control of an underactuated brachiation robot. The robot has 3 links and only one joint, the second one, is actuated. The aim of this work is to develop a control input sequence that moves continuously forward the robot over an horizontal line. We investigate the use of MPC to control the underactuated brachiation robot due to its advantages, mainly the construction of an optimal stabilizing control law and due to its ability to consider in a direct way the constraints into the optimization problem. We present computational simulations with their respective results and we highlight some important considerations.