Development of an Active Force and Position Control Device for Curved Workpiece Geometry Compensation

Generally, the development of an automated contact-pressure-control device for a complicated-shaped workpiece requires complicated algorithms and expensive force sensors. Therefore, a conventional passive device is utilized for the robot regardless of the shape of the workpiece. However, because the existing device is composed of passive elements such as compressed air and conventional springs, the response time is slow and an actively controllable contact pressure is not easily implemented. Hence, in this paper, we propose a novel device to increase precision and response time by using a servo motor and an air pressure controller. The experimental results showed that the steady state response according to the sinusoidal position disturbance was satisfactory with an error of 4.09 for the desired contact force.