Fault tolerant distributed control of manipulator with visual serving

This study proposes distributed control to realize a highly fault tolerant manipulator system using the redundancy. Even if some joints are broken down and locked, the asymptotic stability of the same control is preserved and the desired task is achieved. The proposed control system is suitable for modularization, where each module is composed of control devices, mechanisms, and a processor implemented by the controller. In addition, the modules can to be exchanged with others without changing control law. The validity and the above characteristics are examined theoretically as well as through numerical simulations.