AN ADAPTIVE APPROACH TO MOTION AND FORCE CONTROL OF MULTIPLE COORDINATED ROBOTS

In this paper an approach to motion and force control of multiple coordinated robots, based on an adaptive scheme, is developed. The approach can be used to control the motion of an object held by the robots, the contact force between the object and the environment, and the internal forces which do not contribute to the object motion and contact force. Three subsystem error equations are generated, i.e., position error subsystem, contact force error subsystem, and internal force error subsystem. The adaptive law is derived to estimate the unknown parameters of the multiple coordinated robots, the object, and the environment in terms of the three error subsystem equations. The convergence of the position, contact, internal force errors, and parameter errors is analyzed based on the Lyapunov stability theory. The paper shows that the adaptive control scheme improves the position, and the internal and contact force tracking accuracy for a class of robotic systems with uncertain knowledge of the dynamic model.