Improved force control laws for advanced tracking applications

An approach is presented to improve the performance of existing control laws when the end effector is in contact with a moving object or when it moves along the surface of the object. The approach consists of feeding forward the object motion parameters such as velocity and acceleration, in the force control law. If the motion of the object is not known in advance, its motion parameters are estimated using an observer. The approach is applied to external force control. Simulation results demonstrate the improved performance and are confirmed experimentally. >