Robotic cutting of soft materials using force control & image moments

In this paper, a force/vision control strategy is proposed for the robotic cutting of soft materials. The separation is performed by repeating a series of cuts, called passages, along a deformable three dimensional curve. An image based visual servoing system is proposed to control all six degrees of freedom of the cutting tool. This allows the system to change the cutting depth and angle in response to changes in the profile of the surface. The force is used to ensure the cut is performed cleanly without globally deforming the soft material. The proposed controller is validated experimentally by cutting soft foam material.