A fuzzy adaptive control design for compliant motion of a manipulator

A fuzzy adaptive force controller is designed and integrated with the existing motion control system of a manipulator. This controller works in parallel with the robot controller by calculating the position corrections which allow contact force to be controlled in the desired manner. Fuzzy PI control scheme is used in the force controller design. This intelligent control system features an adaptive feedforward compensation to cope with the variations in the contact environment. Practical implementation has been carried out by integrating a 6D force/torque sensor to an ABB IRB2000 industrial robot. The force controller itself is realized in an PC-AT/486 which has signal interfaces to the robot as well as the force/torque sensor. Some simulation as well as experimental results are presented in this paper