A new golf swing robot to simulate human skill––accuracy improvement of swing motion by learning control

A new golf swing robot to simulate human skill of motion control with one actuated joint and one passive joint has been developed by authors. Because of the special mechanism with non-holonomic constraint of the robot and the motion of high speed, it is difficult to realize an accurate swing motion by usual feedback control. To solve the problem, this paper describes a control method using mainly feedforward control based on an approximate inverse dynamics model (IDM) close to the real system. The approximate IDM is composed of a simple IDM and a compensation IDM represented by a neural network and is to be improved by learning in doing. By this method, most part of control input is shifted from feedback control to feedforward control and an accurate swing can be realized. The method is implemented to the prototype of golf swing robot, and experimental results of shadow swing before and after learning control show the effectiveness of the proposed learning control.