Robot-Environment Interaction Control of a Flexible Joint Light Weight Robot Manipulator

This paper presents a weighted path planning approach for a light weight robot coming into compliant contact with the environment, as well as robot-environment interaction enabled impedance control. Using a joint torque sensor, Cartesian impedance control is introduced to realize the manipulator compliance control. Then the weighted path planning approach is developed to detect the contact condition and to control the interaction. Experiments are carried out on a 5-DOF light weight manipulator. The experimental results validate the developed control approach enhanced by the weighted path planning scheme.