Coordinated Motion Control of Manipulators Based on Impedance Control

This paper proposes a unified coordinated motion control algorithm of manipulators, which is applicable to both manipulation of an object and a parts-mating task. First, we consider the manipulation of an object by impedance controlled manipulators ; the impedance of each arm is designed so that the apparent impedance of the manipulated object is specified. Then we consider the parts-mating problem using the same control algorithm that is proposed for the manipulation of a single object. We propose a method to design the impedance of each arm so that the relative motion of two manipulators has the dynamics appropriate for the assembly of two parts. The experimental results using two industrial robots will illustrate the validity of the proposed control algorithm.