Compliance Control of an Articulated Manipulator : Evaluation of the Control Characteristics and Experiments on a One-Degree-of-Freedom System

Abstract

A practical compliance control method has been developed for a robot manipulator. The developed method has the following practical features. 1) The response of position control is not reduced, although the compliance is set high, when the manipulator hand is not constrained by its environment. 2) Easy and continuous change among compliance, force and position controls is possible. 3) The reference signals to joints of a manipulator are rate signals. In this paper, the compliance control equation which satisfies these features simultaneously was applied to a one-degree-of-freedom model of a manipulator in consideration of its transmission stiffness. As a result, the propriety of the control equation has been confirmed through analysis and experiments.