Impedance Control of an Industrial Manipulator in a Dual Arm Assembly Cell

This paper addresses the problem of the "right hand" control in dual arm assembly cell. While considering the constraints and perturbations that occur during a typical multi-robot assembly task (poorly known and varying environment parameters, mobile obstacles, impacts, friction, noises,...), a controller have been developed in 1]. It is based on an impedance controller which is an intermediate solution between a fully decoupled scheme ((2]) and a linearized scheme. To increase the performances of the resulting controller, a higher control level is added to modify on-line the desired impedance and/or the reference trajectory. This supervisor has been developed using fuzzy logic techniques. The choice of gains to ensure stability is discussed, considering some theorical and practical aspects. Experimental results, obtained on a two-arms assembly system, illustrate the ability of the system to absorb large external impacts.