EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR FORCE DISTRIBUTION IN COOPERATING MANIPULATOR SYSTEMS USING LOCAL JOINT CONTROL

Local control schemes using only position and rate errors to generate control forces are widely used for control of open-chain, serial-link robotic mechanisms. When two or more such open chains interact, closed kinematic chain, redundantly actuated mechanisms are formed. Recent w ork has shown that the vector of joint forces produced using a local p roportional-plus-derivative feedback scheme for the control of a coope rating manipulator system results in a vector of joint torques with a minimum weighted Euclidean norm. The current work presents the derivat ion of this force distribution and experimental evidence to corroborat e the analytic results. The data presented are obtained from an experi mental cooperating manipulator system developed specifically for use i n the application of theoretical control approaches in cooperating har dware systems.