Analysis of constrained elastic manipulations

In controlling manipulators interacting with the external environment, an important issue is the choice and construction of the Cartesian level control system. To eeec-tively control the constrained manipulators, a knowledge of the resulting compliance of the system is required. In this paper a systematic analysis of the Cartesian stii-ness and compliance matrices, which at full extent has not been undertaken in literature, is presented. A generalized model of a constrained exible end-eeector interacting with an elastic environment is developed on the basis of static and kinematic equations. The model developed is then applied to the case of several manipu-lators coupled through a common object.