Intelligent compliant motion control

This paper presents a new work on compliant motion control for position-controlled manipulators. Two new methods for achieving efficient interaction between the manipulator and its environment are developed. In both methods, the compliance is formulated as a function of the interaction force. The first method uses an adaptive element to update the compliance, while the second one adopts a scheme that is believed to be used in human beings to control the stiffness of muscles. The stability of the system is investigated using the small gain theorem. Experiments are conducted in our lab to demonstrate the use of such schemes