PASSIVE VELOCITY FIELD CONTROL (PVFC) APPROACH TO ROBOT FORCE CONTROL AND CONTOUR FOLLOWING

Abstract

A passive velocity field control (PVFC) approach is proposed to achieve simultaneous contour following, and force profile tracking control. The approach has the unique features that 1) it is energetically passive so that when it physically interacts with an object, safety and contact stability properties are enhanced; 2) contour following task is coded using a velocity field instead of the a timed trajectory approach so that the coordination aspect of these tasks is explicit. Previous application of PVFC to contour following has shown that it has good contour tracking accuracies and robustness properties, especially at high speeds. The present paper combines an integral force controller with PVFC. The combined controller is ensured to be passive, and various modifications have been proposed to further enhance robustness to alleviate impact, and to ensure that the controller is numerically well conditioned. 1 Introduction In many applications, a robot is required to traverse along a co...