Force control strategies for compliant and stiff contact: an experimental study

We present experimental results for explicit force control of a manipulator in contact with compliant as well as stiff environments. We begin with simple force control strategies; we adopt such a basic approach due to the ambiguous nature of results presented in the literature. Besides, in doing so, we take into cognizance the state-of-the art in robotic hardware, which has important implications in any implementation of force control strategies. Our results indicate that PID control is the best strategy for both, stiff as well as compliant environments. Damping plays an important role in the stability of force control schemes; however, it is difficult to obtain sufficient damping due to the noise in the force sensor