Contact identification and monitoring based on energy

This article presents a systematic and fully general model-based approach to identify geometrical uncertainties and to detect topological transitions in contact situations during compliant motion robot tasks. The emphasis is not on control but on modelling, online uncertainty identification and model validation (monitoring). The identification and monitoring methods presented are based on energy considerations and thus are invariant with respect to changes in the mathematical representations. Only one signal has to be monitored in order to validate the correctness of the contact model. The theoretical developments are illustrated by a real world experiment: a complete assembly of a peg into a hole. Due to the computational complexity, only off-line identification and monitoring are executed