Modeling of force sensing and validation of disturbance observer for force control

Controlling robots in contact with the environment is an important problem in industry applications. Generally, a force sensor is used for sensing the external force. It is well known that information of a force sensor has much noise. Furthermore, unstable state is also caused by the narrow bandwidth of force information by a force sensor. This paper shows that stable contact with the environment is difficult when a force sensor is used because of its soft mechanical structure and narrow bandwidth of force sensing. In order to solve the instability of force control, the disturbance observer is implemented instead of the force sensor. The disturbance observer can observe the external force without force sensors. When the disturbance observer is implemented in a robot, a force control system does not include a soft mechanism between a robot and the environment. Since a robot can detect the environmental information directly, a wide bandwidth of force sensing is attained. In this way, this paper solves the problems of force control by considering the force sensing method without changing the control architecture, and the ability of force control is improved. Experimental results show viability of the proposed method.