Flexible Force Control on Industrial Robot for Spacecraft Assembly

In this paper, a robot-assisted assembly method is proposed for the installation of large weight components of spacecraft. A six-axis force/torque sensor is installed between the robot end flange and the installation object for sensing the force and torque information. The manpower acts directly on the load at the end of the robot, the system obtains the information of the action function through the force sensing algorithm, and then uses the information as input to control the movement of the robot, so that the manipulated object follows the human movement. The paper gives a detailed design and brief algorithms, and preliminary experimental verification. Experiments show that the assembly method can effectively improve the efficiency of the installation of large weight workpiece in the spacecraft, also safe and reliable.