Online Impedance Adaptation Facilitates Manipulating a Whip

Manipulation of flexible objects is one of the major challenges in robotics as the nonlinear dynamics of the high-dimensional object structure makes it difficult to apply current control methods. A previous simulation study showed that control with few pre-structured joint trajectories coupled with joint impedance (dynamic primitives) could control a 25-dimensional whip to hit a target. This was possible even though the impedance values were constant. This paper explores whether time-varying impedance throughout the movement may further enhance performance. We present an online impedance adaptation (OIA) controller that modulates the joint impedances of a two-joint actuator in real time for the same task. Results showed that the OIA control method increased the speed of optimization and resulted in smaller deviation from the zero-torque joint trajectories compared to the controller with constant joint impedances. This novel way to modulate both motion and impedance of a manipulator may facilitate the control of flexible objects with significant dynamics.