Distributed force/position consensus tracking of networked robotic manipulators

In this paper, we address the tracking problem of distributed force/position for networked robotic manipulators in the presence of dynamic uncertainties. The end-effectors of the manipulators are in contact with flat compliant environment with uncertain stiffness and distance. The control objective is that the robotic followers track the convex hull spanned by the leaders under directed graphs. We propose a distributed adaptive force control scheme with an adaptive force observer to achieve the asymptotic force synchronization in constrained space, which also maintains a cascaded closed-loop structure separating the system into kinematic module and dynamic module. A decentralized stiffness updating law is also proposed to deal with the environment uncertainties. The convergence of tracking errors of force and position is proved using Lyapunov stability theory and input-output stability analysis tool. Finally, simulations are performed to show effectiveness of the theoretical approach.