Merging Position and Force Control into a Single Control Structure: One Step towards Smart Actuating System

The paper discusses a control strategy that merges position and force control into a single control structure. The structure, denoted as the universal motion controller in our previous work, can be utilized to build a smart actuating system that runs a mechanical system with $n$ degrees of freedom. A smart actuating system has an integrated controller and it can be used in plug-and-play fashion for different trajectory tracking and force control tasks, defined either in configuration space, or in the task space. The only input of the actuating system is the attraction force in configuration space. Based on the attraction force, the smart actuating system is capable of imposing input forces to the mechanical system that will ensure execution of a specified task.