Coordinated motion control of robot arm based on virtual internal model

The authors propose an alternative coordinated motion control architecture for robot arms manipulating an object. The motion and the internal force of the object are resolved into the motion of each arm. Each arm is controlled, on the basis of the virtual internal model, so that they operate in coordination even if geometric errors exist in the arms and the object. The virtual internal model is a reference model driven by sensory information implemented in the controller. The proposed architecture maintains the stability of the system even if breakage of the manipulated object occurs. The control algorithm was experimentally applied to the coordinated motion control of two planar robot arms, each of which has three degrees of freedom. The results illustrate the validity of the proposed control architecture