Control

Force Control

Force control is a family of robot control strategies that regulate the forces and torques a robot exerts on its environment, rather than or in addition to its position. Variants include direct force control with force-torque feedback, hybrid position/force control that partitions task axes, and indirect methods like impedance and admittance control that shape the relationship between motion and force. It is essential for contact-rich tasks such as insertion, polishing, and assembly.

Why it matters for physical AI

Contact-rich manipulation fails under pure position control because millimeter errors produce huge forces; force-aware control is the substrate that lets learned policies act safely and effectively through contact.