Researchers studied how movement in a mobile robot’s base affects sustained contact tasks, using sanding simulations and experiments on two lightweight, unactuated wheeled testbeds. With low resistance between the base and ground, the robots realised just 54–70% of a 100-newton force command, and the tool’s position error reached 100 millimetres.
Increasing base-ground resistance during contact improved force delivery and stopped further tool displacement. The team also found that base vibration did not consistently track force error in the tested conditions.
Why it matters
For teams using lightweight mobile robots for sanding or similar contact work, the findings show that securing the base against the ground can affect force and tool accuracy, though the study does not establish how well this carries over to other tasks or platforms.
