Robust Force Control of a Robot Manipulator

Abstract

In this article, we develop a robust position/force controller based on the impedance approach without requiring exact knowledge of the robot dynamics. The controller is constructed so that a desired positional trajectory can be followed along the surface of the environment while the forces exerted on the environmental surface are regulated according to a target impedance. A global uniform ultimate boundedness result is ob tained for the position tracking error and the force regulation error (i.e., the error between the actual manipulator impedance and the desired target impedance). The controller only requires measurement of the end-effector force, joint velocity, and joint position.