Nonlinear Subsystem-Based Adaptive Impedance Control of Physical Human-Robot-Environment Interaction in Contact-Rich Tasks

Haptic upper limb exoskeletons are robots that assist human operators during task execution while having the ability to render virtual or remote environments. Therefore, ensuring the stability of such robots in physical human-robot-environment interaction (pHREI) is crucial. Having a wide range of Z-width, which indicates the region of passively renderable impedance by a haptic display, is also important for rendering a broad range of virtual environments. To address these issues, this study designs subsystem-based adaptive impedance control to achieve a stable pHREI for 7 degrees of freedom haptic exoskeleton. The presented controller decomposes the entire system into subsystems and designs the controller at the subsystem level. The stability of the controller in the presence of contact with a virtual environment and human arm force is proven by employing the concept of virtual stability. Additionally, the Z-width of the 7-DoF haptic exoskeleton is illustrated using experimental data and improved by exploiting varying virtual mass element. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the controller. The control results are also compared to state-of-the-art control methods, highlighting the excellence of the designed controller.