Force/Vision Based Active Damping Control of Contact Transition in Dynamic Environments

When a manipulator interacts with objects with poorly damped oscillatory modes, undesired oscillations and bouncing may result. In this paper, we present a method for observer-based control of a rigid manipulator interacting with an environment with linear dynamics. The controller injects a desired damping into the environment dynamics, using both visualand force sensing for stable control of the contact transition. Stability of the system is shown using an observer-based backstepping design method, and simulations and experiments are performed in order to validate the chosen approach.