Design of Force Control Parameters Considering Cycle Time

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to the design of force control parameters for robotic assembly. Appropriate force control parameters are necessary in order to achieve assembly operations successfully and assure high efficiency of the operations. In practical assembly lines, a cycle time that is the time to perform an operation is required to be reduced. In this paper, a designing method of force control parameters that can reduce a cycle time is proposed and applied to Peg-in-Hole operations. In the method, sub-optimal parameters are obtained through iterative simulations of assembly operations because it is very difficult to calculate a cycle time analytically. First, the proposed method is formulated as an optimization problem. Next, a simulator for robotic Peg-in-Hole operations is developed based on preliminary experiments. Force control parameters are then optimized by using the simulator. Finally, experimental results are shown to demonstrate the validity of the parameters obtained through the proposed method.