Contact Transition Control of a Single Flexible Link Using Positive Acceleration Feedback

The ability to control a robot in both constrained and unconstrained situations is important. One way to do this is using a switching controller which uses a force controller for constrained space and a position controller for unconstrained space. This paper develops a switching controller for a single flexible link manipulator and provides experimental results for a motion from unconstrained to constrained space. The effect of different levels of positive acceleration feedback on the force response, after a collision with an unexpected object occurs, is examined. It is concluded that small amounts of positive acceleration feedback reduces the force overshoot caused by the collision but that too much can cause instability.