A compliance control design for safe motion of a robotic manipulator

For domestic and service robots, the robotic manipulator may cause danger or damage to surrounding objects and people if the manipulator does not understand the details about the environment. To cope with this problem, we investigate compliance motion controller design in order to develop a dependable and safe robot. This paper presents a novel safe motion strategy together with its experimental study for a robot arm. Taking into account a manipulator in a home environment, we divide manipulator behaviors into standby mode and motion mode. For standby mode, a compliant motion design has been developed for force guide-through motion. In motion mode, the proposed safety motion strategy ensures safe execution of tasks. Experimental results of a 4-DOF manipulator constructed in the lab validate the developed safe motion strategy.