Trajectory adaptation for an impedance controlled cooperative robot according to an operator's force

The goal of this paper is to design a controller for a cooperative robot based on a human's force that makes the robot's end-effector follow predefined motion primitives. To this aim, based on a 3D model of the robot, the kinematics and dynamics are analyzed at first. Then, an automatic online trajectory generator is designed based on the pre-defined motion primitives and the human operator intention detection. The generated trajectory serves as an input to an impedance controller. The designed impedance controller makes the robot achieve an active compliance for a safe cooperation with the human operator. The proposed controller is implemented on a robot, namely WallMoBot, which is a cooperative robot for heavy glass panels installation. Simulations of the proposed method are presented, and the results show that the method is well suited for the WallMoBot. •The WallMoBot is a construction robot designed to cooperate with the human operator for heavy glass panel installation.•An impedance controller is developed for WallMoBot in order to achieve the desired physical human robot interaction.•The impedance controller is interconnected with an online trajectory generator that substitute the motion primitives.