A robot-assisted finishing system with an active torque controller

The development of a robot-assisted surface finishing system with an active torque controller is presented in this paper. We utilize a dexterous manipulator to attain the desired position and orientation in three-dimensional space during finishing processes. A single-axis active controller consists of a DC motor and a software observer is attached to the robot wrist and used to actuate a pneumatic hand-grinder The torque observer is designed to sense the grinding contact force based on the driving current and output position of the motor. The function of the active torque controller includes observing the polishing contact force, applying a desired polishing pressure in the normal diffraction of the specimen surface and adjusting the contact angle between the hand-grinder and the surface of the workpiece. In this research, the prototype of a robot-assisted finishing system is constructed and tested on a Tatung A530 robot The experimental results show that the robot-assisted finishing system functions well under a variety of grinding and polishing conditions