Adaptive control of robotic surface finishing processes

Adaptive control of robotic surface finishing processes such as deburring, grinding, chamfering and polishing is considered. In prior work (P.R. Pagilla and B. Yu, 2001), a dynamic model that describes the behavior of the robot for a complete surface finishing task was developed. A control scheme was also developed that enables stable transition of the robot from free motion to constrained motion on the surface. Emphasis is given to the constrained motion on the surface that includes motion control along the surface and force control normal to the surface. The focus of the paper is on two aspects. First, adaptation of the grinding coefficient that relates the normal and the tangential force on the surface is studied. Second, two types of constraint surfaces, straight and curved, are considered in the study. Experiments were conducted for a complete robot task for both types of surfaces. Experimental results show good tracking performance for both the surfaces with the proposed adaptive control design. Further, convergence of the grinding coefficient to a constant for both surfaces is observed