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Passive Compliance from Robot Limbs and its Usefulness in Robotic Automation

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Abstract

Robots have been traditionally used as positioning devices without muchregard to external forces experienced by the tool. This has limited furtherpotential applications of robots in automation. Most tasks that remain to beautomated require constrained robot motion and/or involve work done by therobot on the environment. Such tasks require both force and positioncontrol. The ability to control the end-effector compliance is critical tosuccessful force and position control tasks. Although the end-effectorcompliance can be actively controlled through the joint flexibilitiesprovided by the joint servos or by active force sensing, the usefulness ofhaving the minimum passive compliance in addition to active compliancecontrol can improve performance. In surface following, for example, it isnecessary to make the end-point of a robot have the right compliance toprevent jamming. The usefulness of passive compliance has been demonstratedby the use of compliance-devices on the robot end-effector such as theRemote Center Compliance. The natural compliance inherent in light weightand flexible robot structures, however, can be exploited to provide thenecessary passive compliance required.

In this paper we present a novel framework for computing the end-effectorcompliance from the compliance offered by the limbs of a serial robot. Theemphasis is on the explanation of the passive end-effector complianceresulting from these structures, and particular attention is given to theuse of these results in the selection of the type of robot for a particulartask. We show examples of end-effector compliances as functions of jointconfigurations for the SCARA- and PUMA-type robots. The joint-configurationdependent end-effector compliance can be used to select the desired robotpose for the performance of a robotic task.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Production Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore, 0511

    Marcelo H. Ang Jr.

  2. Center for Robotics and Advanced Automation, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, 48309, U.S.A

    Wei Wang & Robert N. K. Loh

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore, 0511

    Teck-Seng Low

Authors
  1. Marcelo H. Ang Jr.
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  2. Wei Wang
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  3. Robert N. K. Loh
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  4. Teck-Seng Low
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Ang Jr., M.H., Wang, W., Loh, R.N.K. et al. Passive Compliance from Robot Limbs and its Usefulness in Robotic Automation. Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems 20, 1–21 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007952828908

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