Generalized admittance control for robotic manipulators

A method, comprising:

• in a control system communicatively coupled to a robotic manipulator:
• receiving, from a sensor system of a robotic manipulator, contact force measurements associated with a physical interaction of the robotic manipulator with an object, the robotic manipulator comprising a robotic arm and an effector coupled to the robotic arm;
• determining a surface portion of the robotic manipulator on which the physical interaction with the object occurs;
• sampling a set of interaction points from the surface portion;
• computing a generalized velocity for an admittance control of the robotic manipulator,
• the generalized velocity is computed by minimizing a cost function comprising a relationship between the received contact force measurements and an approximation term which models an application of an actual contact force of the physical interaction on the sampled set of interaction points;
• and
• generating a set of joint control instructions to control a motion of the robotic manipulator, based on the generalized velocity.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon, computer-executable instructions that when executed by a control system, causes the control system to execute operations, the operations comprising:

• receiving, from a sensor system of a robotic manipulator, contact force measurements associated with a physical interaction of the robotic manipulator with an object,
• determining a surface portion of the robotic manipulator on which the physical interaction with the object occurs;
• sampling a set of interaction points from the surface portion;
• computing a generalized velocity for an admittance control of the robotic manipulator,
• the generalized velocity is computed by minimizing a cost function comprising a relationship between the received contact force measurements and an approximation term which models an application of an actual contact force of the physical interaction on the sampled set of interaction points;
• and
• generating, based on the generalized velocity, a set of joint control instructions to control a motion of the robotic manipulator.