Quarry of environmental information based on twin robot system - Environment Quarrier

This paper shows a novel force sensing method based on twin robot system. Two same types of robots are required and they are controlled with same position and force by bilateral control. One robot is in contact motion and the other is never contacted. The gravity and the friction effects can be identified by disturbance observer. A robot itself is used as a parameter identifier. Purity of external force is obtained by subtracting the disturbance torque in a noncontact robot from one in a contacted robot. Since this force sensing method does not need a parameter identification, it is very easy to implement it in multi-link manipulators. Sensor-less force control is one of the fundamental techniques for evolution of human-cooperating robots, tele-robotics, robotic virtual reality and so on. Force sensing based on twin robot system named "Environment Quarrier" will have a great impact on the academic society, industrial world, the field of medicine and so on. The numerical and experimental results show viability of the proposed method.