Active Compliance and Damping in Telemanipulator Control Active Compliance and Damping in Telemanipulator Control Variable simulated springs and shock absorbers soften collisions and increase dexterity.
Active compliance can help to soften collisions between the manipulator and objects.
The compliance parameters can be adjusted to suit the task at hand. In a typical current industrial force-reflecting telemanipulator, the force of co ntact between the robot hand and an object is, strictly speaking, neither sensed nor controlled. Instead, the remote manipulator is activated according to hand position commands, while the contact force fed back through the hand controller to the human operator is made to increase with the feedback signal that indicates the error between the actual and the commanded position of the manipulator. In such a system, the manipulator hand is prone to hard bumps against objects, and small errors in the execution of position commands can give rise to undesired large contact forces and torques. In the experimental telemanipulator system, the control task is shared by subsystems in both the control station and the remote-manipulator station.