Effect of Joint-Specific PD Gain Allocation on Position Tracking Performance in Snake Robots
2026 8th International Congress on Human-Computer Interaction, Optimization and Robotic Applications (ICHORA), Ankara, Turkey, 21 May - 23 June 2026, pp.1-6, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Doi Number: 10.1109/ichora69329.2026.11537252
- City: Ankara
- Country: Turkey
- Page Numbers: pp.1-6
- Karadeniz Technical University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
Accurate joint position tracking in snake robots is challenging because the joints do not exhibit identical dynamic behavior, mainly due to inter-joint coupling and body motion effects. Although proportional-derivative (PD) controllers are widely used because of their simplicity, assigning identical gains to all joints may lead to inconsistent tracking performance across the joints. In this study, uniform-gain and joint-specific PD control structures are compared for snake robot joint control. The gain values of both structures are optimized using the Symbiotic Organisms Search (SOS) algorithm. Simulation results show that the joint-specific gain configuration reduces the total integral of squared error (ISE) by approximately 20%, while the error of the joint with the highest tracking error is reduced by about 43%. Although the total control effort increases slightly, the increase remains limited to approximately 1.5%, and the torque profiles remain within the actuator limits. These results demonstrate that joint-specific PD gain allocation improves tracking performance without a significant increase in control effort.