Journal Of Applied and Computational Sciences in Mechanics

Journal Of Applied and Computational Sciences in Mechanics

Enhancing Robustness in Robot-Environment Interactions: A Hybrid Position-Force Control Approach with Feedback Linearization and Passive Degrees of Freedom for Shock Mitigation+

Document Type : Articles

Authors
Rahman Ardakanian 1
Iman Kardan 2
AliAkbar Akbari 3
Ali Mousavi 4
1 Student of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
2 Mechanical Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
3 Professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
4 Assistant Professor of Department of Computer Engineering, Ne. C., Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran
10.22067/jacsm.2026.96789.1391
Abstract
Robot-environment interactions in dynamic or unstructured settings are often degraded by impact shocks, vibration, and uncertainty in contact geometry and mechanical properties. This paper proposes an interaction architecture that combines feedback-linearized hybrid position-force control with a passive compliant degree of freedom embedded at the end-effector. Unlike conventional hybrid position-force control, which relies mainly on active feedback, force sensing, and gain tuning, the proposed architecture uses a physical spring-damper interface to store and dissipate impact energy at the contact point before high-frequency shocks propagate to the actuated joints and force-control loop. The approach is evaluated in MATLAB/Simulink on a 2-DOF planar manipulator with three end-effector configurations: rigid, spring-only, and spring-damper. Results under fixed and time-varying interaction conditions show that the spring-damper configuration provides stronger attenuation of contact-induced oscillations, lower force and velocity error variance, and smoother joint-torque response. Representative reductions include 36.5% in fixed-environment tangential force-error standard deviation, 25.4% in variable-environment normal force-error standard deviation, and 41.1% in variable-environment normal velocity-error standard deviation.
Keywords
Hybrid position-force control
passive degrees of freedom
shock mitigation
robot-environment interactions
variable stiffness
unstructured environments
Subjects
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