Fuzzy position-force control in training systems with haptic guidance

In contact operations, haptic information plays a very important role on compensating the limitation of visual information. Therefore, there is growing interests in the application of force feedback to improve the perception of the operators in virtual training systems. Based on the analysis on the load of the force feedback system, a gain-scheduling fuzzy proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is proposed to deal with the issues about position-force control in the training system with guiding force. The experiment results showed that, users can perform the training through moving along the pre-designed trajectories under the guidance of haptic feedback, while the jitter of the force feedback device was effectively suppressed during the training process. Thus, it is suggested that this proposed fuzzy-PID controller can be widely used in the force feedback training systems, such as rehabilitation robots and skill training systems in which the users have to maintain a proper moving path.