Dynamic Modeling and Experimental Validation of Door-Opening Process by a Mobile Manipulator

Door-opening is a critical problem for robots used for rescue purposes in nuclear power plants (NPPs). A force and torque (F/T) sensor is not used in the rescue task for door-opening in the NPPs environment. It is, therefore, necessary to study the dynamic model of door-opening. The NPPs door and a door handle dynamic model are significant to the mechanical design, simulation, and dynamic feed-forward control of an NPP robot. To obtain the accurate force data of door-opening, a method based on a gravity compensation algorithm combined with a transformation of the contact force of the end effector is proposed. This paper analyzes the structural features and dynamics model of a fire door and a door handle. Methods for identifying the model parameters are also developed by combining a Nelder-Mead simplex search with the least-squares algorithm. The extensive door-opening experiments were carried out in this paper, and the results validate the fidelity of the derived dynamic models of the door and the door handle.