Active Data-Enabled Robot Learning of Elastic Workpiece Interactions

During manufacturing processes, such as clamping and drilling of elastic structures, it is essential to maintain tool–workpiece normality to minimize shear forces and torques, thereby preventing damage to the tool or the workpiece. The challenge arises in making precise model-based predictions of the relatively large deformations that occur as the applied normal force (e.g., clamping force) is increased. However, precision deformation predictions are essential for selecting the optimal robot pose that maintains force normality. Therefore, recent works have employed force–displacement measurements at each work location to determine the robot pose for maintaining tool normality. Nevertheless, this approach, which relies on local measurements at each work location and at each gradual increment of the applied normal force, can be slow and consequently time prohibitive. The main contributions of this work are: (i) to use Gaussian process (GP) methods to learn the robot-pose map for force normality at unmeasured workpiece locations; and (ii) to use active learning to optimally select and minimize the number of measurement locations needed for accurate learning of the robot-pose map. Experimental results show that the number of data points needed with active learning is 77.8% less than the case with a benchmark linear positioning learning for the same level of model precision. Additionally, the learned robot-pose map enables a rapid increase of the normal force at unmeasured locations on the workpiece, reaching force-increment rates up to eight times faster than the original force-increment rate when the robot is learning the correct pose.