Energy shaping control for robot manipulators in explicit force regulation tasks with elastic environments

In this paper, we analyse and present a control approach using the energy shaping formulation to explicitly regulate the applied force of a robot manipulator in contact with a purely elastic environment. The potential energy of the robot-environment system is shaped in a way that its local equilibrium implies the application of the desired force onto the contact surface. This potential shaping is realised based on the available contact force feedback. Also, it is shown how force feedback can be employed to modulate the amount of energy externally injected by a source subsystem, and with this achieve exact force convergence. Experimental results are presented to validate this approach.