Neural Velocity Force Control for Industrial Manipulators Contacting Rigid Surfaces

We present a new neural velocity force control scheme for a DOF industrial manipulator ensuring tracking of end e ector positions along unconstrained directions and tracking of contact force along the constrained direction to signi cantly expand the range of manipulator applications Neural velocity force control is actually feasible even in the case of an extreme sti environment which is a quite common situation in industrial applications A cascaded velocity controller CVC ensures the precise approach with a tender impact to the unknown surface The neural controller is of inverse dynamics type with a force feedforward action and performs an adaptive computation of the inverse manipula tor model Simulation results for a DOF industrial manipulator are reported and show the convenience of the approach for demanding tasks like dismantling or surface tracking inclusive establishing contact to rigid objects with precisely bounded impact forces