Universal Robots Forum

Increasing the ease of movement in freedrive


I am trying to hand guide the UR5 robot in free-drive to make it write alphabets.
While doing so, I found that there is less ease in movement of robot, i.e. I have to apply a certain minimal force to make it move with ease, as ease as moving the our hand or while

Does someone have any idea about how to go about this with dynamic force control?

I was wondering “less ease” is due to stiffness of brakes or stiffness or some other factor ?

The easiest way to make freedrive feel lighter is to ensure that you have the current tool correctly configured in the installation file. Correctly configuring the TCP, the centre of gravity as well as, most importantly, the payload will mean the robot is correctly counteracting the forces of the tool. That being said, there is still a small amount of initial resistance when freedriving the robot weven with a correctly configured tool, especially with a CB3 robot, which uses a lower control frequency when compared to the e-series, which helps makes the e-series freedrive smoother.

I’m afraid I dont know if this is something that could be achieved with dynamic force control, though a hand guide feature is something that is built into some force torque sensors, such as the OnRobot HEX sensor, which allows you to use the force feedback from the sensor to hand guide the robot much smoother than with the built in freedrive function.

Is this the same topic as you started here?

yeah similar one, but with different perspective/interpretation.

I am still trying to solve this problem without using external force/torque sensor.