A Fast and Compliant Task Control System for a Parallel Robot to Exploit Its Actuator Back-Drivability

Abstract

This paper presents the execution of very fast and complicated tasks with a high-speed and accurate parallel robot, named HEXA. We propose a unified motion, force and compliance control scheme which does not use any force/torque sensors, but exploits actuator back-drivability. It is a well-known fact that with the back-drivability in the actuator, the weight and cost of the force control system is reduced. The motivation behind this work is to exhibit the usefulness of the versatile HEXA mechanism for applications in industry. Different experiments for complex and fast tasks, for example, sequential peg-in-hole insertions on an inclinded table, crank-turning, tdeburring and composite tasks have been performed using this control system.