Sliding Mode Momentum Observers for Estimation of External Torques and Joint Acceleration

Interactions between robots and their environment give rise to external wrenches acting on the robot structure. The estimation of the resulting torques in the joints is fundamental in human-robot interaction to detect/identify collisions and perform suitable reaction strategies. Other applications may require to use the estimation for compensating the effects of the external torques within the control loop. The well-established momentum observer, which relies on proprioceptive sensors only, is usually used for these purposes. In this work, the momentum dynamics is used to derive new observers. While the classic momentum observer provides a first-order filtered version of the external torques, here a (theoretically) finite-time convergence is achieved. Simulations and experiments are used to validate the performance of the proposed methods.