Robotic Assembly for Irregular Shaped Peg-in-Hole with Partial Constraints

Abstract

The tight tolerance peg-in-hole process brings great challenges for robotic assembly. Force control-based methods have been proposed to generate complex compliant behavior to deal with the shape and clearance variances. However, existing solutions are based on the assumption that the peg and hole parts are fixed during the assembly process and can absorb the contact force completely. For this purpose, customized fixtures have to be designed and utilized, which greatly affect the system’s deployment cost, time, and flexibility. Considering the fact that in an assembly, the parts are naturally related to each other, this paper studies the irregular-shaped peg-in-hole assembly problem with partial constraints. Firstly, geometric and force model are developed for the natural constraints between the parts; by analyzing the behavior of the partial constraint, a control policy is proposed to compensate the position errors and drive the parts to a stable equilibrium point; For the irregular-shaped parts, a multiple-stage searching method is developed to efficiently search for the real hole location; Finally, a switching force/position hybrid controller is designed to coordinate the alignment, searching and insertion processes. The method is implemented in a real platform. The experiment results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.