Switching the Mass for the Impact Control of a Flexible Robot

Abstract The most dangerous part of a force control task is the impact. This article proposes a regulator that achieves both impact control and force reference tracking. The former is obtained switching of the mass of the system in order to dissipate the energy of the system as fast as possible. It is demonstrated how the virtual mass may be switched. Also, the optimal switching criteria are deduced in order to dissipate the energy as fast as possible. It is demonstrated that the system does not enter the sliding regimes when the mass is switched. The theoretical conclusions are verified in simulations.