Robot interaction control is one of the most challenging targets for industrial robotics. While it would provide the robotic systems with a high degree of autonomy, its effectiveness is limited by the complexity of this problem and by the necessity of special sensors (six-dof force sensors). On the other hand, the control methodologies to be adopted for addressing this problem can be considered mature and well-assessed. All the known interaction control strategies (e.g. impedance, direct force control) are tackled and reshuffled in a geometrically consistent way for simplification of the task specification and enhancement of the execution performance. This book represents the first step towards the application of theoretical results at an industrial level; in fact each proposed control algorithm is experimentally tested here on an industrial robotic setup.
