Adaptive Modular Vector Field Control for Robot Contact Tasks in Uncertain Environments

We propose adaptive modular vector field control (AMVFC) for a robot manipulator to interact with uncertain environmental geometric constraints. Starting from an uncertain geometric model of the environment, we first parameterize the desired velocity vector field of the robot using the weighted combination of a set of basis vector fields. Then, to overcome the influence of environmental model uncertainty, we add force feedback to adjust robot dynamics and the weight parameters of the desired velocity field for the robot to approach the real environment. Simulation of a robot interacting with uncertain circles and an ellipse demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.