International FAIM Conference 24th : 2014 : San Antonio, TexasUniversity of Texas at San Antonio. Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean SystemsCarreon, AugustoChidentree TreesatayapunBaltazar, Arturo2022-07-082022-07-082014http://dx.doi.org/10.14809/faim.2014.0095https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12588/945Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San AntonioIncludes bibliographical referencesIn this article, a novel force control system for soft contact with an object of unknown mechanical properties is proposed by using an ultrasonic sensor implemented in a 3 DOF manipulator robotic system. The emphasis is on the development of a control system to allow soft contact with an object of nonlinear elastic contact properties. In this work a Multi-input Fuzzy Rules Emulate Network (MiFREN) scheme controller with adaptation is developed to regulate the contact force. We propose the use of an ultrasonic sensor in conjunction with a signal conditioning for force based on a parallel-distributed-model as well as the Hertzian model, and considering the transmission and reflection of ultrasonic wave properties. The IF-THEN rules for the MiFREN control are defined taking into account the human knowledge of a physical system and a stability analysis is developed by the Lyapunov method. The experimental results demonstrate that the system is able to find a stable first contact force and moreover the proposed controller is capable of controlling the contact force for both regulation and tracking tasks.en-USAutomatic controlRobots--Control systemsManipulators (Mechanism)Ultrasonic wavesArticle