Conflicting effects of manipulator kinematics and dynamics on the stabilities of two alternative compliance control structures

In this paper the kinematic stability issue of manipulator compliant motion is further studied by considering both the kinematics and the dynamics of a two-link manipulator. It has been found by simulation that the joint compliance structure is not always better than the Cartesian compliance structure in the system stability sense. When the actuator is modeled as to be sensitive to manipulator load variation, the joint compliance structure will result in better stability performance, as expected. When the actuator is not so sensitive to load variation, however, the Cartesian compliance will result in better performance