Force Sensing and Compliance Control for a Cable-Driven Redundant Manipulator

The cable-driven redundant manipulator (CDRM) has a light slender and highly dexterous body, which is especially suitable for fine manipulation in confined spaces or unstructured environments. However, for dexterous manipulation and physical interaction with its surrounding environment, the force/torque sensor is indispensable, which will significantly increase the mass, dimension, and cost of the whole CDRM system. In this article, a force-sensing algorithm and compliance control framework for CDRM without a six-axis force/torque sensor are proposed. First, we design a modular cable-driven manipulator with two-level internal sensors, i.e., joint encoders and cable tension sensors. The multispace kinetic model is derived to establish the mapping between motor, cable, joint, and end-effector states. At the same time, we build a recursive dynamics model that takes the cables’ tension, cable–hole friction, links’ gravity, and end-effector forces into account. Then, the indirect force-sensing algorithm of the end-effector is proposed by combining the kinematic and dynamic equations and internal sensor information. Furthermore, a compliance controller based on indirect force sensing is designed. Finally, typical experiments are carried out based on the CDRM. Experiment results indicate that the force-sensing accuracy exceeds 95%, whereas the compliance controller demonstrates outstanding compliant behavior in human–robot interaction tasks.