Force control is nowadays a mature technology, widespread in modern robotics systems and commercialized within several application domains (e.g. industrial robots, collaborative robots, rehabilitation robotics). However, assessing the performance of a force-controlled system is not a trivial task as it may be strongly influenced by the environment dynamics. Exerting a force on a soft environment (which is characterized by a slow dynamics) is different from exerting a force on a rigid environment (which is characterized by a fast dynamics). Thus, the same force-controlled robot can have different force responses in different environments and a standardized and comprehensive method to assess the performance of a force-controlled system is still not available. The FORECAST project aims at filling this gap by proposing a benchmarking method able to define an objective score for a given force-controlled system accounting for its sensitivity to environment uncertainties and variations.
