Force control of a two-arm robot: implementation on a multiprocessor architecture

Presents some practical solutions chosen to implement the force control of a two-arm robot on a multiprocessor architecture. The force control considered is the symmetric hybrid control proposed by M. Uchiyama and P. Dauchez (1987) for the manipulation of a single rigid object firmly held by two arms. The authors recall the definitions of the controlled vectors in this case. They present their experimental setup which includes two six-axis PUMA arms, equipped with two six-axis force sensors, and a multiprocessor controller based on a VME bus. The main part of the paper deals with the implementation of the hybrid control on the equipment and emphasizes: (i) the modifications of the control scheme; and (ii) the programming solutions used for reducing the computation time. Some preliminary experimental results and directions for future work are included