Implementation of Force Feedback in "Gross Motion" Control of Manipulation Robots

Abstract The paper presents experimental results of implementing force feedback in "gross motion" control of the robotic system. An experimental gripper has been developed with force transducers measuring all three components of the forces in contact points between the payload and gripper. A direct digital controller has been developed for a particular robotic system which includes force feedback from the transducers on the grippper. The force feedback is intended to improve both the so-called "gross motion" and "fine motion" control. In the first case the feedback by dynamic force has to improve the quality of tracking of fast trajectories and make the controller robust to variation of the parameters of the payload. In the second case the force feedback has to reduce reaction forces appearing in "peg in hole" process between the parts being mated. The experimental results show the benefits obtained by force feedback implementation in both cases. In this paper "gross motion" control by force feedback is experimentally studied