Contact force controlled robotic polishing for complex PMMA parts with an active end-effector

Due to the advantages in weather resistance, light transmittance and dimension stability, PMMA has been widely used in various fields such as aerospace and optical engineering. However, fully automatic robot systems are seldom used for polishing complex PMMA parts with high surface integrity. Therefore, a robotic polishing system with a new active end-effector is developed in this paper. In the system, a 6-degree-of-freedom industrial robot is utilized to polish the part profile along the preprogrammed paths, and then the system configuration is introduced in detail. For precisely controlling the normal contact force, both a linear voice coil motor and a force sensor are used in the designed end-effector. Meanwhile, a tilt sensor is also used to compensate the gravity component of the polishing tool along the force-controlled direction. Subsequently, a hybrid force controller, which consists of a PID controller and a Fuzzy controller, is designed to maintain the contact force between the polishing tool and the part within an allowable range. Finally, validation experiments are conducted with the designed robotic polishing system on a complex PMMA part. The experimental results show that the proposed robotic polishing system can strictly control the normal contact force and ensure high surface integrity of the PMMA part.