Calculation of Deformation of a Flexible Contact Sensor and Estimation of Mechanical Impedance of an Object

Abstract

This paper describes the calculation of deformation of a flexible contact sensor. Expressions to calculate the deformation are derived using Castigliano's theorem. The deformation is calculated in real-time with the use of measured contact forces. Accuracy of the calculated deformation is confirmed experimentally. The experimental results show that the calculated deformation agrees approximately with the actual deformation.
With the aim of applying this calculated deformation to certain robot tasks, the sensor is attached on a robot hand and the mechanical impedance parameters of an object which is grasped by the robot hand is estimated with the use of a Kalman filter. This experimenta demonstrates that these parameters are stably estimated exactly.