Automated Feed-Forward Learning for Pressure-Compensated Mobile Hydraulic Valves With Significant Dead-Zone

Hydraulic manipulators on mobile machines, whose hydraulic actuators are usually controlled by mobile hydraulic valves, are being considered for robotic closed-loop control. A feed-forward-based strategy combining position and velocity feedback has been found to be an effective method for the motion control of pressure-compensated mobile hydraulic valves that have a significant dead zone. The feed-forward can be manually identified. However, manually identifying the feed-forward models for each valve-actuator pair is often very time-consuming and error-prone. For this practical reason, we propose an automated feed-forward learning method based on velocity and position feedback. We present experimental results for a heavy-duty hydraulic manipulator on a forest forwarder to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. These results motivate the automated identification of velocity feed-forward models for motion control of heavy-duty hydraulic manipulators controlled by pressure-compensated mobile hydraulic valves that have a significant input dead zone.