Hardware-in-the-loop simulation of an impedance controlled robot using a direct-drive test bench

This article presents the hardware-in-the-loop simulation of an impedance control applied to a virtual robot acting on a stiff environment. A test bench, which is composed of a direct-drive manipulator and a stiff environment, is used as the hardware part. A hardware-in-the-loop controller is used to command the manipulator so that it reproduces the virtual robot dynamics. Hence, the latter virtually acts on the real environment. Experimental results of the hardware-in-the-loop simulation are compared to pure simulation. It shows that both results are very similar and therefore the real robot can accurately reproduce the virtual robot dynamics.