Compliant Motion Control for Robot Manipulators (Input-Output Approach)

The work presented here is a controller design methodology for robot manipulators based on the input-output functional relationships [26] in the dynamic behavior of the robot manipulator and environment. This controller guarantees: 1) the robot end-point follows an input command vector "closely" when the robot is not constrained by the environment, and 2) the contact force is a function of the same input command vector fused in the unconstrained environment) when the robot is constrained by the environment. The controller is capable of "handling" both types of constrained and unconstrained maneuverings, and is robust to bounded uncertainties in the robot dynamics. The controller does not need any hardware or software switch for the transition between unconstrained and constrained maneuvering. A set of experiments has been carried out in reference 14 and 15 to show how this unified approach can develop compliant motion in a constrained maneuvering.