Spatial impedance control of two cooperative industrial manipulators

Nowadays robotic manipulators are considered to perform a wide range of tasks. Since robotic systems consisting of multiple manipulators are capable of handling a variety of tasks that cannot be executed by single manipulators, cooperation of multiple manipulators is becoming increasingly interesting in particular for industrial applications. The interaction with other manipulators, respectively the environment, requires an extension of the conventional position control in order to achieve a desired compliance, and thus to limit the interaction wrench so to avoid damaging the involved objects. In this contribution the cooperation of two industrial manipulators, a Stäubli RX130L (6‐DOF) and a Stäubli TX90L mounted on a linear axis (constituting a redundant 7‐DOF manipulator), is addressed applying an impedance control scheme. The manipulation task is to grasp an object with both manipulators and to follow a prescribed trajectory by simultaneously limiting the contact forces between the manipulators and the object and ensuring a compliant behavior towards the environment. (© 2016 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)