Research and application on force control of industrial robot polishing concave curved surfaces

In order to improve the quality of the industrial robot automatic polishing on curved surfaces and ensure the constant polishing pressure during polishing process, a method for polishing complex concave cavity surfaces with industrial robot is proposed in this article. The method can achieve stable force control and precise position control and is easy to be realized online. In order to ensure the removal rate uniformity of surface material at different normal vectors, a method for adjusting the speed of motorized spindle in real time according to the surface normal vector is proposed. After planning the trajectory and normal vectors, combined with the feedback force signal from the sensor and the proportional–integral controller in the direction of the normal vector, the robot terminal tool corrects the trajectory in the direction of the surface normal vector, indirectly realizing force control between the tool and the surface. The robot polishing system with different polishing tools has different system stiffness. In order to ensure the polishing system with different stiffness to have a better tracking performance of the contact force, an adaptive proportional–integral control algorithm proposed in this article can be used to evaluate the stiffness of polishing system and to adjust proportional–integral parameters. The simulation and experimental results indicate that the method can realize the polishing of concave cavity surface commendably.