An industrial application of control of dynamic behavior of robots-a walk-through programmed welding robot

Robot programming is a very tedious task that involves defining the relevant robot positions and configurations, and writing the robot program to execute the task. In this paper, we present an application of the control of the dynamic behavior of robotic manipulators to achieve walk-through programming of a powered arm. The algorithm is based on impedance control with zero stiffness to allow the robot to be moved by the human hand during walk-through teaching. We demonstrate the application using a welding robot we have customized and improved on for use in shipyards. We describe the architecture, our methodologies, the practical issues and present the results of our performance evaluation