Implementation of Force Feedback in Manipulation Robots

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental results of implementing force feedback in controlling a robotic system. We developed an experimental gripper with force transducers that measure all three components of the forces in contact points between the payload and gripper. A direct digital controller is devel oped for a particular robotic system that includes force feed back from the transducers on the gripper. The force feedback is intended to improve both the so-called "gross motion " and "fine motion" control. In the first case, the feedback by dy namic force improves the quality of tracking fast trajectories and makes the controller robust to variation of the parame ters of the payload. In the second case, the force feedback has to reduce reaction forces appearing in the "peg-in-hole" process between the parts being mated. The experimental results show the benefits obtained by force feedback imple mentation in both cases. This is proof that force feedback can be used successfully for general control of robots for various types of tasks.