For solving the singularity problem arising in the control of manipulators, an efficient way is to maximize its manipulability. However, it is challenging to optimize manipulability effectively because it is a nonconvex function to the joint angles of a robotic arm. In addition, the involvement of an inversion operation in the expression of manipulability makes it even hard for timely optimization due to the intensively computational burden for matrix inversion. In this paper, we make progress on real-time manipulability optimization by establishing a dynamic neural network for recurrent calculation of manipulability-maximal control actions for redundant manipulators under physical constraints in an inverse-free manner. By expressing position tracking and matrix inversion as equality constraints, physical limits as inequality constraints, and velocity-level manipulability measure, which is affine to the joint velocities, as the objective function, the manipulability optimization scheme is further formulated as a constrained quadratic program. Then, a dynamic neural network with rigorously provable convergence is constructed to solve such a problem online. Computer simulations are conducted and show that, compared to the existing methods, the proposed scheme can raise the manipulability almost 40% on average, which substantiates the efficacy, accuracy, and superiority of the proposed manipulability optimization scheme.

Meta-heuristic algorithms have become very popular because of powerful performance on the optimization problem. A new algorithm called beetle antennae search algorithm (BAS) is proposed in the paper inspired by the searching behavior of long-horn beetles. The BAS algorithm imitates the function of antennae and the random walking mechanism of beetles in nature, and then two main steps of detecting and searching are implemented. Finally, the algorithm is benchmarked on 2 well-known test functions, in which the numerical results validate the efficacy of the proposed BAS algorithm.

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF)-based models possess fine representativeness of a target matrix, which is critically important in collaborative filtering (CF)-based recommender systems. However, current NMF-based CF recommenders suffer from the problem of high computational and storage complexity, as well as slow convergence rate, which prevents them from industrial usage in context of big data. To address these issues, this paper proposes an alternating direction method (ADM)-based nonnegative latent factor (ANLF) model. The main idea is to implement the ADM-based optimization with regard to each single feature, to obtain high convergence rate as well as low complexity. Both computational and storage costs of ANLF are linear with the size of given data in the target matrix, which ensures high efficiency when dealing with extremely sparse matrices usually seen in CF problems. As demonstrated by the experiments on large, real data sets, ANLF also ensures fast convergence and high prediction accuracy, as well as the maintenance of nonnegativity constraints. Moreover, it is simple and easy to implement for real applications of learning systems.

Redundancy resolution is a critical problem in the control of robotic manipulators. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs), as inherently parallel processing models for time-sequence processing, are potentially applicable for the motion control of manipulators. However, the development of neural models for high-accuracy and real-time control is a challenging problem. This paper identifies two limitations of the existing RNN solutions for manipulator control, i.e., position error accumulation and the convex restriction on the projection set, and overcomes them by proposing two modified neural network models. Our method allows nonconvex sets for projection operations, and control error does not accumulate over time in the presence of noise. Unlike most works in which RNNs are used to process time sequences, the proposed approach is model-based and training-free, which makes it possible to achieve fast tracking of reference signals with superior robustness and accuracy. Theoretical analysis reveals the global stability of a system under the control of the proposed neural networks. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed control method in both the position regulation and tracking control of redundant PUMA 560 manipulators.