On the feedback linearization of robots with variable joint stiffness

Physical human-robot interaction requires the development of safe and dependable robots. This involves the mechanical design of lightweight and compliant manipulators and the definition of motion control laws that allow to combine compliant behavior in reaction to possible collisions, while preserving accuracy and performance of rigid robots in free space. In this framework, great attention has been given to robots manipulators with relevant elasticity at the joints/transmissions. While the modeling and control of robots with elastic joints of finite but constant stiffness is a well- established topic, few results are available for the case of robot structures with variable joint stiffness -mostly limited to the 1-dof case. We present here a basic control study for a general class of multi-dof manipulators with variable joint stiffness, taking into account different possible modalities for changing the joint stiffness on the fly by an additional set of commands. It is shown that nonlinear control laws, based either on static or dynamic state feedback, are able to exactly linearize the closed- loop equations and allow to simultaneously impose a desired behavior to the robot motion and to the joint stiffness in an decoupled way. Illustrative simulations results are presented.