Implicit force control for an industrial robot with flexible joints and flexible links

The main purpose of this paper is to present an implicit force control scheme for 6 DoF industrial robots, whose compliance model takes into account both joint and link elasticities. The system composed by the robot and the environment is modeled by means of a simple equivalent elasticity at the end effector. A method to avoid limit cycles due to friction during force control applications is then proposed. The compliance model and the force control are experimentally validated on a industrial robot equipped with a force sensor.