Intelligent Control of Robot Arm Using Artificial Neural Networks

Yuki Yamada, Bahman Kermanshahi, Norio Tagawa, Tadashi Moriya

Department of Electrical Engineering
Tokyo Metropolitan University
1-1 Minami Osawa, Hachioji-shi , Tokyo 192-03, Japan
Phone +81-426-77-2754 FAX $81-426-77-2737 E-mail : yamada@elena eei.metro-u.ac.jp

A bstrart- I n this p a p e r , a n intelligent technique

h a s been developed t o t r a c k a cancer automatically. First. a n ultrasonic diagnosis device, which
was conventionally m a i n t a i n e d a n d o p e r a t e d by hum a n h a n d , is fixed o n the t o p of a r o b o t a r m a n d
carried out tlie control to t r a c k a cancer 011 moiiitor. Second, an artificial n e u r a l network lias been
applied t o learn t h e track trajectory. Using t h e proposed nietliod, t h e cancers location becomes clear
and autoiliatic tracking becomes possible. In this
study, a neural network w i t h r e c u r r e n t connections
lias b w i i used t o predict the position of cancer using t h e respiration waveform information aiid tlie
diagnosis devices location. The designed recurrent
neural iietwork will take t h e location of diagnosis device a n d respiration waveform information a t period
t as inpiits and predicts tlie location of cancers displacement a t t t l . In addition, t o seek for each joint
angle of robot a r m t o let diagnosis device iiiove t o
t h a t position, an inverse kinematics m o d e l using t h e
neural iictwork has been proposed. Ultimately, b y
conibiiiing these t w o n e u r a l networks, an a u t o m a t i c
control of robot a r m h a s b e e n successfully carried
out.

1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, a great deal of effort, has been devoted to development of methodologies for cancer therapy. Among them, Heavy Iron therapy is higlily under
at,teiition. Compared t o other radiation modalities, this
method realizes excellent localization of does distribution I>?avoiding irradiation of intervening aiid adjacent
normal t.issue. In order to fully exploit this advantage,
it, is necessary t,o irra.diate the Heavy Iron radiation to
each posit.ion of tlie cancer which iiioves with respirat.ioii. T o moiiitmoithe cancer, especia.11~liver cancer, an
ultrasonic method is widely used. I t should he noted
t h a t c,aiicer tracking has been tried by image processiug techniques, liowever the track in real time was difficult and caiicer prot>rudedfrom monitor so far. In this
st.udy, we fixed an ultrasonic diagnosis device on the
top of a robot a r m aiid tracked the cancer which was
iiioved on a monitor with respiration. Theii, let neural
network learii the trajectory of t h e ultrasonic diagnosis
device. B y using t,lie neural network, it, became possible
t.o track the caiicer autoniatically.
As a first a.pproach, we controlled the robot a r m i n
only one tliiiieiisioii followiiig respirat,ioii aiid IC[ art,ificial neural iietwork learii the trajectory of tlie device
and rcspiratioii.

0-7803-31-09-5/96/$5.00

11. ARTIFICIAL NEURALnETW0RIt

Art,ificial neural networks are computa.tiona1 iiiotlels
which take a hint of mechanism of constructioii aiid
information processing of the brain. Receiitly, there
lias been a growing interest in applying artificial iieural
networks to dynamic systems identification (niodeliiig)
prediction, and control. Artificial neural iietworl;~can
comparatively siinplify tlie complex syst,ems. They a1.e
computiiig systems characterized b y t,lie oliilit,! to learn
from exainples (pattern mapping) rather t.hau liaviiig
t o be programmed in a coiiveiitioiial seiisc. Their use
enables the behavior of complex systeiiis t o be modeled and predicted aiid accurate coiitrol to h e a.chieveil
through t,raining, without a priori infornia.tion aliout
tlie systems structures or parameters.
~

A . The Basic Structure

Neural networks provide a unique computing architecture whose potential has oiily begun to he t a p p e d .
Used to address problems t h a t are intractable o r c u m
bersoine with traditional methods, these new coinput,ing architectures, inspired by tlie st,ructureof tlie brain,
are radically different from the systeins that rely on
dense arrangements of interconnections and surprisingly simple processors. Artificial neural iiet~~or1;s
take
their name from the networks of nerve cells in the
brain. Although a great deal of biological detail is eliminated in these computing models, tlie artificial neural networks retain enough of the structure observed in
tlie brain to provide insight into how biological neural
processing inay work. T h u s these modcls coiitril>ut,e
to a paramount scientific challenge
t h e limiii u i i ders t anding itself. Neu r a1 net wor Its uti I i ze a 12 ai.a I 1e 1
processing structure that lias large numbers of processors (Fig. 1) and many interconnections btit.\veeii t h e m
(Fig. 2). These processors are much sinipler t,liaii t y p i cal central processing units (CPUs).

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Xi

Fig. 1. Neuron model

/I. Respiration
The respiration infbrmatioii which is feed into t h e designed neural networlr: as input, is a wadororm obtained
by a strain gage in ofr-line(Fig. 3). We fixed the straiii
gauge adround the abdomen and semor expantiecl arid
c a i i t r a c h g by abdominal nioveinenl, the cliarigt~i s
t,akeii as respiration information. Thei;, the iiifori:aation or respiration (both aiiiplitcde and difrerc
period I) are fed into tlie nema1 iietwork.

Fig. 2 . hlult,i-.laycr perceptron

In n neural network each neuron is !inl;cd to niaiiy

I3 R o b o f 4rm
neiglrhors (typically hundreds or Ibousarids) so
tl1a1, tlicre are many mo1.e iiitercoriiiects than I i c u ~ ~ I i : j .
1 iie power of t h e neural iietworl; lies in the treriieiicious
~iuiriliei or jiitel.coiiiic,ci.ior:s. The iieiiioii perforins a
iveighktl s u n oii the inpiits and uses ii nonlinear tlires!,old fiiiictioii to compute its niitpiif,. Tlic calculat,ed I Y stilt is sent along tlie ou!.pui, coiiiiectioris to t.hc targrt
c e l l . rhe siiiiie o!it,put v d u : i >ntalo1rg all the out,put
o f it,s
r

1,

coli iiect,ioiis

B. Back-Propugalio.rL N e u i d Network
h e of the most widely used of the neural network
pa.radignis aiid has heeii applied succcssfully in applica,tioii sludies in a broad rang:e of areas From military pal,tern recognition to medical
nxognii.ioii to robot aiid au
baclc-propagat,loii. Back. iii c a n atl,aclc m y
p r o b h i ~t h t requires pst!
prediction). Given an iiip:!
duces aii associatecl out,iiiit patterii. Actually, t.he liaclipropagadioii is oiie of the easiest networks to wiideistand. it,s learning and update procedure is iiituiti-vcly
appealing becausc it i s ba.scd on a relatively simple coilcept: if the netn.ork gives th. wrong answer, then the
weiglits are c.orrected so t1ia.t the error is lessened and as
a result future respoiises of t l i p network are more liltel,y
to be correct. B a e l r - p r o p a g a t ~ ~adjusts
n
tlie weights t u
by wing minimizing an energy function as foilcws:

ITere 7 ) is used to distinguish pat,teriis. yd is a tlesiied

o a t p u l nnrl E is a learning ratc.

I E 05

Consi:qneiiily, the ni+worli projects t.lie posiiiori of

diagnosis device which ia supposed to be iii bjiiie t t l
next t h e ( F i g . 5). T h e t,in?e interval has been set to 13.5
soconds. This is the resiilt which coiisidcred the speed
of hlie m b o t a r m arid sainpliiig speed of respirat,iori infor iii at ion.

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joint angle e m r

forward model
Neural Nets

trzjcctory

,,
,,

..

invers model
Neural Nets
iealizcd
tr.ijccloiy

10

SS

20

25

This scheme could be considered as follows too. We

defined an evaluation function of the inverse iiiodel.

30

time (sec)

Fig .5. Displacement following respiration

I.

t+

Fig .7. Forward-inverse modeling sclienie

140

.. ...
,..
...
., ..

desired

r(i +I)

Here, n is used to distinguish trainiiig patterns . Hereafter tlie n is omitted as follows for siiiiplificat,ion of the
formulation. If 71 approaches to i a L j , this will bc niiiiimized. So we update parameter 20 to iiiiiiiinize E by
steepest decent method as follows.

iespiiation amp

( rrspir;ltlon differcnrial )

Fig. 6. Displacement prediction network

IV. INVERSEICINEMATICS hfODEL

Now, in order to let the robot a r m move with a n
interval time of 0.5 seconds t,o the following time appoiiited to predicted position, the joint angles speed
(deg/sec) have to be computed. Therefore, with this
purpose it is necessary to obtain the joint angles of the
robot ami at present and following positions. Generally, this problem is called Inverse Kinematics problem. This nietllod can be determined by other nonlinear techniques. However, since it requires a very coniplex nonlinear functions analysis, particularly when it
has 6 degrees of freedom, then solving of such problem
becoiiics ext,remely difficult. There, we propose the application of neural netnTorls which is quite suitable for
such problem with having a st,rong nonlinear cliaractcristics. Tliree learning schemes have been proposed.
They are direct, inverse modeling, forward-inverse modeliiig[l]! and feedback-error learniiig[2] approacli. Tlie
direct iiivers modeling scheme has not been guaranteed
to succeed i n learning. And the feedbackerror leariiing scheme is not suited for o u r robot, a r m because it
nceds a torqirr as an input, wliich is not availahle in
this study. Therefore, in this study, forward-inverse
inodeling met.liod is applied. Forward-inverse modeling
sc,licmc is slio~viias Fig.7. T h e forward inodel of t<he
rol,or a r m is first learned by iiioiiitoring both tlie input
and t.lie out.put. of the robot arm. T h e desircd moveiiiciit traject,ory is t,lieii fed int,o the inverse model t o
cxlculalc the joint angles. T h e resulting error in the
trajectory space is back propagatmi t,lirougli the forward niotl(~1t.0 calculate t,he joint, angle error, which
is their uscc1 as an error signal for training the inverse
inoclcl.

Here %(= J ) is the Jacobian matrix of robot arm.

JTis appeared because the error in tlie traject,ory

space ( 7 d - T ) propaget,ed back t h o u g h the forward
Inode1.
Accordingly, T approaches t o ~d if adjusts s!xaptic
weights and an inverse model can acquire this error aiiri
a thought, of usual 1ea.rning (1). To olhtairi t.lie iii\erst>
model, the network has G input unit,a. 8 liidtlcii nliit,s. (i
output units.

V I SIMULATION
Tlie results of displaceinent prediction networl; ailti
inverse kinematics are shown in Figs.8,9.lliese net.works were obtained by using a neural net,n.orli siniulntor developed by Universit,y of Toronto called Sei.ioii
And we conibiiied two iiet,worlts (coinliiiiaiioii i i e t , ~ t - o r k ) ,
and it gave its out,ptii, t,o the robot, a m i input,(Fig.10).
Using t,he lraiiied network and off line, respirat.ioii (1
we controlled tlie robot arm in one dimension automat,.
ically. T h e results of training pattern and test pat,tetn
are shown in Figs.l1,12.

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predicted displacement

..

..0

-1.4

10

20

I5

25

30

time (sec)

-0..

desiied dispiacement
predicted displacement

10

15

time (sec)

Fig. 12. O u t p u t of coiiibiiiation networlc

(test data)

Fig. 8. Output of displacement prediction network

desired dir.placement

V I . DISCUSSION

- -OM.

10

20

15

25

30

time (sec)

Fig. 9. Robot arni displ~acementusing an inverse

model

kinematics
model network

-1

robot arm

Fig. 10. Robot a r m control block diagram

In this paper, in oreder to realize t,he automat,ic caiicer tracking using robsot a r m which holds an uli,raso:liic
diagnosis device, we carried out one diiiiensional a.utoniatic control of robot arm. This has been done by using
ANNs which trained t h e respiration and the trajectory
of the uLtrasonic diagnosis device obtained by inoviiig it
with respiration. As further consideration, at first, we
have t o deal with the trajectory obtained by tracking a.
target which moves with respiration actually. :Secoiid,
we inust consider about displacemen t predict ion TY 1tli
respiration carefully. Respiration prediction a.nd correlation between respiration and movemeiit of iiit,eriial organs[3] have been studied by other researchers, particularly respiration prediction under coiiscious state lms
been analized in detail[4]. Third, we have t o increase
the dimension of displacement which is only one in tlliis
simulation. Considering real movement of cancer, tlhis
is quite natural. At last, when we apply this method t o
human, we must consider t h a t the robot arni may apply
much pressures t o the body, and may injures lie/slie or
gives uriconifortableni.ss. In order to avoid this problem, we are now working on controling h e robot. aiim
iiicluding a pressure sensor impedance control to keep
the pressure at a certain level.

desired displacement
predicted displacement

REFERENCES
[l]

M.1. Jordan: Supervised learning and systems .with escess degrees of freedom, COINS Technical Report, 8827,pp.l - 41,1988.

[>!I

M.Kawato, I<,Furukawa and R.Suzuki, A hierarchical

neural-network model for coiit,rol auci IeaiiiinF: of voluntrary movemeiitV, Biological Cyl)eriretics 5 i pp.l(ji1-

[?;I

Weili Yin A Study of the Correlatioii Ibetrvecn Rwpiration and Movement of Orgaiis risiirg I!lt.rasonic I i i i age, PROC.OF ?E 1995 IEICF: (
FEIZENCE 1995 (in Japanese )
Takahiro Yoiieda Prediction of R.e>pirat,~o~l
Wi~velorn~
using Multivariate AR Model, IEI(.F, rechnical Ileport, MBE95 January 1996.

185,1987.

- -oAl
0

10

IS

20

23

30

time (sec)

[4.]

Fig. 11. Out,put of combination network

(t,raining data)

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