On rolling contact motion by robotic fingers via prescribed performance control

Rolling Contact Motion Generation and Control of Robotic Fingers

“…The solution we propose in this work is the generation of a reference position trajectory for the ideal rolling case and the tracking of this trajectory via a prescribed performance tracking control law. The proposed control law is of low complexity, in contrast to the structurally and computationally complex controller [3] utilized in [6]. The method to generate the proposed trajectory is presented below, followed by the presentation of the tracking controller.…”

“…Following the prescribed performance approach, novel model-free controllers have been designed for both unconstrained and constrained robot motion [3,8,9]. The current paper is an extension of the conference paper [6] where the basic idea of planning an ideal rolling trajectory is presented. Compared to [6], the current paper contains the design of a novel control solution for motion/force tracking that is structurally and computationally simpler and its validation through both simulation and experimental studies.…”

“…The current paper is an extension of the conference paper [6] where the basic idea of planning an ideal rolling trajectory is presented. Compared to [6], the current paper contains the design of a novel control solution for motion/force tracking that is structurally and computationally simpler and its validation through both simulation and experimental studies. Specifically, a five degrees of freedom robot finger with a soft tip in contact with a planar surface is simulated to show the robustness of the proposed approach with respect to the contact friction condition.…”

Towards achieving rolling contact motion in a spherical robotic fingertip

“…However most of the controllers proposed for the dexterous grasping and manipulation of an object do not explicitly consider rolling as a control objective but are designed based on robot models subject to rolling constraints [5], [6]. Consequently they fail to achieve fingertip rolling in case of low friction conditions as shown in [7], [8]. The reason for this failure is that the use of the constrained model actually implies a potentially infinite friction coefficient that clearly does not hold in practice.…”

“…Thus in real case scenarios, the robotic fingertip may slide upon the contacted surface. There are only few attempts that consider rolling as a control objective [7], [8]. Guarantees of a rolling motion are given only in [8] via the utilization of a complex prescribed performance position force controller which requires planning in advance of a desired rolling trajectory.…”