Robust impedance control for robot manipulators

Abstract

This thesis describes the development and implementation of robust impedance control to perform an assembly task of inserting a printed circuit board (PCB) into an edge connector socket using a multi-joint robot. The insertion task involves compliant manipulation in which a substantial force is needed to accomplish the insertion operation. Due to dynamic constraints from the environment, this task is quite demanding and is adopted in the research as a common test-bed to evaluate the performance of robust control schemes with those of model-based control laws. The purpose is to identify an effective control technique for this application and hope that the findings can be extended to other assembly tasks of similar nature.