Trajectory Generation using Activator-Inhibitor Systems

It is once said that 'He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.' Inspired by this saying, the dynamics of the partially known flexible motion system are considered in the making process of the desired trajectory signals it has to follow by exploiting systems and signals relations. Accordingly, the trajectory generator system activates the motion of the driven system whose tracking performance inhibits the generator and forces it to modify its trajectories while ensuring the desired motion requirements are met. Using singular perturbation theory, a near optimal trajectory generator system is designed, and with the aid of a suitable state observer a cascaded head-to-tail activator-inhibitor system configuration is realized. Essentially, the closed-loop error is fed-back to the trajectory generation process rather than using a limited feedforward controller alone based on the partially known dynamics. The superiority of the proposed technique is compared to the Sine-Squared motion trajectory, and its performance is evaluated through simulation.