TOWARD THE IMPLEMENTATION OF HYBRID POSITION FORCE CONTROL IN INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS/

With the goal of filling the gap between theory and industrial applica tions, an implicit hybrid control scheme is proposed in this paper, de signed to fit as much as possible the conventional industrial robot co ntrol architecture. The dynamic effects due to joint compliance, which are a major source of performance degradation in industrial robots, a re fully taken into account, The scheme is based on a task description particularly suited for a direct integration in conventional robot pr ogramming tools and aims at exerting the force control action without affecting the trajectory tracking, Only the differential kinematic mod el (Jacobian) of the robot is needed in the design of the force contro l law, while the force control loop is charged with rejecting dynamic disturbances due to motion. A thorough experimental validation of the strategy, both in terms of force regulation and trajectory tracking ca pabilities, is discussed, based on experiments performed on an industr ial robot, endowed with a six-axis wrist force/torque sensor and with a laser distance sensor.