Force Controlled Contour Following by an Industrial Robot on Unknown Objects with Tool Orientation Control

This paper deals with force controlled contour following performed by a position controlled industrial robot. In some kinds of contour following tasks it may be necessary to keep the robot tool in a constant orientation with respect to the inclination angle of the contact environment. For this purpose the paper investigates different approaches of tool orientation control as a function of the environment inclination angle in the contact point. All presented approaches are verified and compared by real experiments.