Trajectory Tracking Feedback Control of Robot Manipulators with Coupled Dynamics of Force and Position

When a robot manipulator contacts an object, a Coulomb friction force occurs in the motion direction on the surface. Therefore, it seems that the previously proposed control methods can not obtain good control performance with trajectory tracking. This paper proposes a new trajectory tracking control method for cases that there is a Coulomb friction force between a robot and an object. It is mathematically proven that trajectory tracking errors between actual motions and desired motions can be effectively reduced as position and velocity feedback gains increase. The trajectory tracking performance of the proposed feedback control method is demonstrated by some simulation results.