Abstract
This paper describes a directional control method of a small tunneling robot using an optimal regulator. This robot constructs conduits of telecomunication cables. The directional control of a tunneling robot conventionally depends on both the experience and intuition of the operator, and there have been no studies with regard to its automation. Therefore, in order to establish automatic control technology for a small tunneling robot, we have already proposed a directional control method in while the head angle of the control input is the sum of the deviation multiplied by feedback gain Kp and the angular deviation multiplied by feedback gain Ka. However, this method must search the feedback gains Kp and Ka by trial and error. So, in this paper, we used an optimal regulator as a directional control method. The feedback gains of the optimal regulator can obtain by using Riccati equation automatically. First, the transfer function of the relationship between the head angle of the control input and the deviation, the angular deviation of the tunneling robot was obtained by linear approximation. Then, this transfer function was transferred to the state space representation. Next, the optimal controller was constructed by the optimal regulator and the observer. Simulation results showed that this controller performed good directional control under changing the initial position, angle of the robot and the design line. These results showed the validity of this control method using the optimal regulator.
