Collision Avoidance in Model Predictive Control using Velocity Damper

Code HAL Paper
  • 1 LAAS-CNRS, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France
  • 2 Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute, Toulouse, France
  • 3 Continental, Toulouse, France
  • 4 MiM - Machines in Motion Laboratory, New York University, USA

Abstract

We propose an advanced method for controlling the motion of a manipulator robot with strict collision avoidance in dynamic environments, leveraging a velocity damper constraint. Unlike conventional distance-based constraints, which tend to saturate near obstacles to reach optimality, the velocity damper constraint considers both distance and relative velocity, ensuring a safer separation. This constraint is incorporated into a model predictive control framework and enforced as a hard constraint through analytical derivatives supplied to the numerical solver. The approach has been fully implemented on a Franka Emika Panda robot and validated through experimental trials, demonstrating effective collision avoidance during dynamic tasks and robustness to unmodeled disturbances.