Analysis of constrained elastic manipulations

In controlling manipulators interacting with the external environment, an important issue is the choice and construction of the Cartesian level control system. To effectively control the constrained manipulators, a knowledge of the resulting compliance of the system is required. In this paper a systematic analysis of the Cartesian stiffness and compliance matrices, which at full extent has not been undertaken in literature, is presented. A generalized model of a constrained flexible end-effector interacting with an elastic environment is developed on the basis of static and kinematic equations. The model developed is then applied to the case of several manipulators coupled through a common object