On-line Reconfiguration of Real-Time Robot Motion and Force Control

Combining position and force control is highly desirable in many robot applications. Many years of extensive research has resulted in a number of promising control approaches, but often too much engineering effort is required in order to evaluate a low level (high performance) control scheme on a real manipulator. The new control system we have obtained has two main advantages: first it provides a total open control architecture, and second it is the simplicity and the interactivity of the platform developed. Using this new control architecture, any force and motion control strategy can be programmed and implemented in a graphical and easy way.