Manual guidance of a compliant manipulator during curve-following tasks: Basic framework and preliminary experimental tests

Human robot collaboration (HRC) is a cogent need in many industrial applications nowadays. This paper proposes a framework specifically targeting curve-following tasks whereby a compliant robot, in impedance-control mode, can be manually guided by an operator. Preliminary experiments are described to test the performance of approach. In particular, data relative to curve following in the case of vertical tool positioner versus vertical tool positioner plus impedance-control mode are performed under manual guidance, showing better performance in the former case.