Toward High-Speed Switching Motor Control for Human-Interactive Robotics

Traditionally focused on applications where humans have been kept safely out of reach, the field of robotics is undergoing a major shift as recent developments have brought humans much closer to robots. While device hardware has progressed to fill this new field, the underlying controller and amplifier architecture has remained nearly the same as that developed for industrial robots decades ago. Herein we develop a new, integrated control architecture designed to address the unique requirements of human-interactive robotic devices. This new architecture takes advantage of recent technological advances to produce a single-loop, third order controller integrating both switching control and a fullstate observer. In this paper, we explore the performance on a simplified, first-order system, specifically focusing on the interaction between the controller and the DC motors found in many devices. Experimental testing demonstrates improvements compared to existing PWM and linear amplifiers, with the promise of future improvements for the field of human-interactive robotics.