Disturbance observer based force control of robot manipulator without force sensor

In this paper, a force estimation method is proposed for force control without force sensor. A disturbance observer is applied to each joint of an n degrees of freedom manipulator to obtain a simple equivalent robot dynamics being represented as an n independent double integrator system. To estimate the output of disturbance observer due to internal torque, the disturbance observer output estimator (DOOE) is designed, where uncertain parameters of the robot manipulator are adjusted by the gradient method to minimize the performance index which is defined as the quadratic form of the error signal between the output of disturbance observer and that of DOOE. When the external force is exerted, the external force is estimated by the difference between the output of disturbance observer and DOOE. A force controller is designed for force feedback control employing the estimated force signal. Several numerical examples and experimental results are illustrated for a 2-axis direct drive robot manipulator.