Position identification in force-guided peg-in-hole assembly tasks

Position uncertainty is inevitable in many force-guided robotic assembly tasks. Such uncertainty can cause a significant delay, extra energy expenditure, and may even results in detriments to the mated parts or the robot itself. This article suggests a strategy for identifying the accurate hole position in force-guided robotic peg-in-hole assembly tasks through employing only the captured wrench (the Cartesian forces and torques) signals of the manipulated. In the framework of using the Contact-State (CS) modeling for such robotic tasks, the identification of the hole position is realized through detecting the CS that corresponds for the phase of the peg-on-hole, that is the phase in which the peg is located precisely on the hole. Expectation Maximization-based Gaussian Mixtures Model (EM-GMM) CS modeling scheme is employed in detecting the CS corresponding for the peg-on-hole phase. Only the wrench signals are used in modeling and detecting the phases of the assembly process. The considered peg-in-hole assembly process starts from free space and as soon as the peg touches the environment with missing the hole, a spiral search path is followed that would survey the whole environment surface. When the CS of the peg-on-hole is detected, the hole position is identified. Experiments are conducted on a KUKA Lightweight Robot (LWR) doing typical peg-in-hole assembly tasks. Multiple hole positions are considered and excellent performance of the proposed identification strategy is shown.