KINEMATIC CONTROL OF A RECONFIGURABLE STAIR-CLIMBING SYSTEM

This paper describes the design of a non-linear control law for a reconfigurable stair-climbing device which has the objective of achieving an excellent system stability; which will lead to an acceptable level of comfort and assure security to its user. In order to accommodate the stair-climbing system to the different geometries of the architectural barriers, the prototype needs to change its configuration. For this reason we propose a control law based on a PI controller plus a compensation law for the nonlinear terms, with the aim to control the system inclination. In addition, there is a mechanism that selects the appropriate system configuration. This control scheme has been compared to a classic PI controller scheme based on a linearized model. The result of this simulation demonstrates a better performance in regard to high precision trajectory tracking and therefore a more robust system.