High performance robot manipulators, in terms of cycle time and accuracy, require well designed control methods, based on accurate dynamic models. Robot manipulators are traditionally described by the flexible joint model or the flexible link model. These models only consider elasticity in the rotational direction. When these models are used for control or simulation, the accuracy can be limite...

New generation robots, meant for physical human robot interactions, are no longer rigid; it has become soft in terms of introduction of considerable flexibility at the actuated joints, flexibility of the links and in terms of compliant coverings. Safety requirement becomes primary in situations where physical interactions occur, calling for compliance; but accuracy and control bandwidth get com...

This paper proposes a nonlinear H∞ controller to control a single link rotary flexible joint robot which has dead zone problem. Dead zone properties are caused by dry friction and gearbox backlashes. The flexibility in setup robot is performed by means of a solenoid spring, which is connected between actuator shaft-out and joint shaft-input in a bilateral connection form. The effect of dead zon...

Mechanical flexibility in robot manipulators is due to compliance at the joints and/or distributed deflection of the links. Dynamic models of the two classes of robots with flexible joints or flexible links are presented, together with control laws addressing the motion tasks of regulation to constant equilibrium states and of asymptotic tracking of output trajectories. Control design for robot...

The successful control of a robot hand with multiple degrees of freedom not only requires sensors to determine the state of the hand but also a thorough understanding of the actuator system and its properties. This article presents a set of sensors and analyzes the actuator properties of an anthropomorphic robot hand driven by flexible fluidic actuators. These flexible and compact actuators are...

This paper describes the development of a novel humanoid robot foot/ankle based on an orientation Parallel Kinematic Mechanism for intelligent and flexible control. With three identical Universal-Prismatic-Spherical prismatic-actuated limbs and a central Universal-Revolute passive limb, the PKM can perform three degrees of freedom rotation motions. In order to enable the humanoid robot safely t...

An H∞ synthesis method for control of a flexible joint, with non-linear spring characteristic, is proposed. The first step of the synthesis method is to extend the joint model with an uncertainty description of the stiffness parameter. In the second step, a non-linear optimisation problem, based on nominal performance and robust stability requirements, has to be solved. Using the Lyapunov shapi...

Robot viewers are an important tool for robot developers, programmers and users. This article presents interactive visual features that can be used for robot viewers, including rotating arrows for torque controlled serial robots and special positioned textfields for numerically displaying joint parameters. The presented features support intuitive interaction modes such that the displayed conten...

In this paper we present an automatic model identification tool of ABB's industrial robots. The tool has been developed entirely in Matlab and has made extensive use of the graphical-user-interface options and the objectoriented design philosophy made possible in Matlab versions 5.0 and newer. The tool is able to automatically identify rigid-body robot parameters such as inertias and Coriolis f...

We describe a model for task-driven, naturallanguage-based human-robot interaction where the roles of the two participants are fully interchangeable, both at the conversational level and at the task level. This model provides a general treatment of joint-action dialogue, and also allows models based on the analysis of human-human joint-action dialogues easily to be implemented and evaluated. I....