Force synchronization of multiple robot manipulators: A first study

Motion synchronization of multi-composed systems has proved to be efficient at improving productivity in industrial production processes and found its applications in wider areas such as formation control of mobile robots, multiple robot manipulators coordination, etc. With the development of robot technologies, robotic systems have been used more extensively in service and other non-traditional domains, where contact force between robot and the object/environment under interaction is of great interest and importance. As the counterpart of motion synchronization in multi-robot control, force synchronization has not been explored yet in literature. This work presents the first study of force synchronization for multi-robot system. Based on cross-coupling technique, the force synchronization scheme is developed and asymptotic convergence of both force control error of single manipulator and mutual coupling errors between each pair of the whole robotic system is guaranteed through Lyapunov analysis. Simulation studies of two situations confirm the efficiency of proposed control method and show the improved performance of force control for multi-robot system in terms of accuracy and robustness against external disturbances.