EXTENDED IMPEDANCE CONTROL USING REAL AND VIRTUAL SENSORS FOR REDUNDANT MANIPULATORS

Control of a redundant manipulator based on an impedance-control frame work with multiple simultaneous control sources is described. Each con trol source provides a different behavior type. An application is deco mposed into multiple simultaneous behaviors whose resultant behavior w ill provide the motion necessary to execute the task. The simultaneous control inputs are merged using impedance control to compute a result ant command to the manipulator. The task space of each behavior can ha ve the dimensionality of the mechanism being controlled. Control of a seven-degree-of-freedom manipulator is described here with an availabl e task space for each behavior of dimensionality seven.