Null-space impedance control with disturbance observer

In this paper a new approach for the null-space impedance control of a kinematically redundant robot is proposed. The approach is useful for the case where the robot experience an external interaction on the body, especially in the presence of humans. The proposed algorithm guarantees safe and dependable physical interaction of the robot body with the environment, thanks to the null-space impedance control. At the same time, the correct execution of the task assigned to the end effector is ensured by a disturbance observer. The algorithm does not require joint torque measurements. The performance of the proposed controller is verified through simulations on 7R KUKA lightweight robot arm.