Impact Analysis for the Planning of Targeted Non-Slippage Impacts of Robot Manipulators

Some impact tasks for robot manipulators, like stamping, demand that the end-effector does not slip off the target at the contact transition. We refer to this class of impacts as targeted non-slippage impacts and provide solutions to perform them. We present a model-based analysis and provide impact configurations and corresponding sets of joint space approach directions, under which the targeted non-slippage impact can be obtained. We show that the task space approach direction corresponding to a target configuration is unique and refer to it as the non-slippage impact direction (NSID). By means of an exemplary system, we demonstrate the target dependence of the NSID. The analysis presented in this work can be utilized for the planning of targeted non-slippage impact applications. We address two aspects in more detail. First, we discuss an NSID based choice of the impact target. Moreover, we introduce non-slippage impact paths (NSIPs) as possible approach paths of a target, which directly deduce from the proposed theory. The theoretic results are validated in experiments with a torque controlled robot.