Utilization of vehicle restoring force in force control of robot floating on the water

Summary form only given. In this research, we consider force control problem of the robot floating on the water. The control strategy proposed reduces the number of actuators required for the force control by utilizing the restoring force/moment acting on the vehicle. The relationship between thruster outputs and the contact force/moment at the end-effector is derived taking the restoring force into account. Moreover, a simulator of the vehicle motion is developed, and the results of experiment by means of this simulator illustrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.