Direct teaching and playback algorithm for Peg-in-hole task using impedance control

Industrial manipulators have been mostly used in large companies such as automakers and electronics companies. In recent years, however, demands for industrial manipulators from small and medium-sized enterprises are on the increase because of shortage of manpower and high wages. Since these companies cannot hire robot engineers for operation and programming of a robot, intuitive teaching and playback techniques of a robot manipulator should replace the robot programming which requires substantial knowledge of a robot. This paper proposes an intuitive teaching and playback algorithm used in assembly tasks. An operator can directly teach the robot by grasping the end-effector and moving it to the desired point in the teaching phase. The 6 axis force/torque sensor attached to the manipulator end-effector is used to sense the human intention in teaching the robot. After this teaching phase, a robot can track the target position or trajectory accurately in the playback phase. When the robot contacts the environment during the teaching and playback phases, impedance control is conducted to make the contact task stable. Peg-in-hole experiments are selected to validate the proposed algorithm since this task can describe the important features of various assembly tasks which require both accurate position and force control. It is shown that the proposed teaching and playback algorithm provides high positioning accuracy and stable contact tasks.