The simultaneous control of both the tip position and the reaction forces in flexible robots interacting with the environment is the subject of this research. The adoption of a force control strategy should be particularly beneficial to improve the quality of the operations for these robots, whose positional control presents some inherent limitations. The design of the force/position control law is however hampered by the complexity of the dynamic model of the system and only a few results have been published so far, mostly dealing with simplified situations. A rigorous model of the robot interacting with a rigid environment has been already worked out, while some candidate control strategies are being compared at present. Simulation and possibly experimental work is expected to validate the theoretical results of this research.

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Paolo Rocco
rocco@euler.marc.gatech.edu
Last Revised: May 15, 1995