Force Fields in the Manipulation of Flexible

Assembly operations that involve exible parts differ greatly from rigid-part assembly due to the capacity of the parts to comply with motions of the manipu-lators by yielding to the contact forces. This natural compliance can be exploited in the design of tasks involving the manipulation of exible loads. Namely, using knowledge about the force vector eld generated by conservative restoring forces of the load, a trajectory for the manipulator end-eeector can be speciied. The idea is illustrated through two case studies: an analysis of the problem of bending a exible sheet, and experiments on an insertion task where a exible beam has to be inserted in a hole with friction in the direction of insertion.