HYBRID POSITION/FORCE CONTROL FOR COORDINATION OF A TWO-ARM ROBOT.

The authors discuss the control of cooperating tasks being done by by two robotic arms. In order to control those tasks, they extend a hybrid position/force control scheme for a single-arm robot. The point of the extension is the formulation of kinematics and statics for a two arm robot. The authors define a unique system of workspace coordinates, and, corresponding to the unique workspace, introduce an unique jointspace vector consisting of joint vectors of the two arms. Using these work and joint spaces, the authors formulate the kinematics and statics, and successfully apply the hybrid scheme to the two-arm robot. A demonstration of the theory on a real two-arm industrial robot and experimental data of simultaneous control of position and force proves the effectiveness of the extended method.