Position and Force Control of Manipulators without Using Force Sensors.

In this paper, position and force control of constrained motion of robotic manipulators is discussed. First, issues related to decoupling position and force-controlled directions are discussed. The fundamentals of estimation of contact forces without using force or torque sensors are then presented, and a control scheme for position and force control of robotic manipulators without force sensing is proposed. The extension of this scheme to redundant manipulators is also discussed. Finally, the proposed control scheme is implemented on a 3-DOF planar redundant manipulator, and some experimental results are presented to illustrate the validity of the control scheme.