Sensor fault diagnosis for manipulators performing interaction tasks

In this paper a fault diagnosis approach for sensor faults in cooperative robotic manipulators involved in interaction tasks is presented. The approach is developed for a two-arm cooperative workcell, although it can be easily applied to single-manipulator systems. A bank of discrete-time model-based diagnostic observers is adopted to detect, isolate and identify failures of both sensors at the joints of the manipulators and force/torque sensors mounted at the wrists. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme has been experimentally tested on a cooperative industrial setup composed by two six-dof COMAU Smart-3 S robots.