On the Role of Compliance in Force Control

This paper proposes an overview and an interpretation on the role of compliance in force control within a framework where adaptive control arise as an intuitive approach. In our analysis, we show that force control stability can be assured only if exists a compliant interface between the robot and the environment. Also, we prove that compliance is helpful to ensure well-defined force control dynamics, if combined with a low robot inertia. Otherwise adaptive control algorithms are proposed as a tool to deal with environment uncertainties. Finally, an experimental comparison between the adaptive approach and state of the art solutions is proposed.