High Performance Motion Control and Safe Contact Transition using Impedance-Aware Disturbance Observer

Achieving both safe contact transitions and high-performance motion tracking is essential for robots manipulating in contact-rich environments. Disturbance-observer (DOB) frameworks enable robust motion control, but achieving compliant interaction typically requires additional strategies, and prior work has paid limited attention to how acceleration estimation affects in DOB behavior. In this work, we adopt a second-order sliding-mode observer (SOSML) to obtain noise-robust, low-lag acceleration estimates and integrates them into an Impedance-Aware Disturbance Observer (IADOB). The proposed controller integrates DOB feedback with inner force control to exploit the robot’s natural inertia and rendered stiffness, enabling safe contact transitions without sacrificing motion tracking performance. Experiments on a 7-degree-of-freedom (DoF) Franka Research 3 robot demonstrate improved contact stability, and higher admissible stiffness compared to conventional impedance and momentum observer-based controllers.