Nonlinear Kalman Filtering for Force-Controlled Robot Tasks-[Book review; T. Lefebvre, H. Bruyninckx, and J. De Schutter]

This book focuses on using nonlinear Kalman filtering for force-controlled robot tasks. It examines using a robotic arm to execute contact formation (CF) tasks without vision. The authors give an extensive tutorial discussion of alternate strategies for accomplishing these objectives, and they settle on the nonminimal state Kalman Filter to conduct the group of positioning experiments presented to the reader. The resulting experiments are persuasive and interesting. The authors believe that solving this class of problems effectively will be an important step in bringing into widespread use service and other robots. The literature pertaining to contact and force control is extensive and not entirely represented in this book. It seems likely, however, that judicious estimation/decision schemes such as those presented may be the best real-world hope of dealing with these problems.