Friction Compensation and External Force Estimation for Robotic Systems Using a Fuzzy Neural Network Approach

Abstract

To address inaccurate external force estimation caused by nonlinear friction in robotic systems, this paper proposes a friction compensation and external force estimation method based on an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The approach integrates Stribeck friction modeling with a Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy inference structure to identify joint friction parameters from measured data. Experimental results show that ANFIS yields lower identification errors and better generalization performance than baseline methods including fuzzy neural networks, particle swarm optimization, and least squares. The implemented feedforward compensation strategy achieves maximum torque errors of 0.263 Nm and 0.184 Nm for the two joints, lower than those obtained by the compared approaches. By incorporating the identified friction model into a generalized momentum observer with median and Butterworth filtering, the proposed method reduces the root mean square error and maximum absolute error by 18.3 % and 27.9 %, respectively, and achieves a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.994. In collision detection tests, the method identifies impact events with reduced false alarm rates under the same experimental settings, supporting its applicability to high-precision force control in robotic applications.