Impact control of redundant manipulators using null-space dynamucs

This paper presents an impact control algorithm for reducing the potentially damaging effects by interation of redundant manipulators with their environments. In the. proposed control algorithm, the redundancy is resolved at the torque level by locally minimizing joint torque, subject to tire operational space dynamic formulation which maps tire joint torque set into the operational forces. For a given pre-impact velocity of the manipulator, the proposed approach is on generating joint space trajectories throughout the motion near the contact which instantaneously minimize the impulsive force which is a scalar function of manipulator's configurations. This is done by using the null space dynamics which does not affect the motion of an end-effector. The comparative evaluation of the proposed algorithm with a local torque optimization algorithm without reducing impact is performed by computer simulation. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm in reducing both the effects of impact and large torque requirements.