Remote Center Compliance (RCC) Device

A passive spring mechanism between wrist and gripper that lets a part self-align into a hole during insertion.

RCC is a passive compliance mechanism proposed in the late 1970s by Draper Laboratory (Whitney and colleagues), built from elastic elements and mounted between a robot arm's wrist and its gripper. Its defining feature is that its center of compliance sits outside the device itself, near the tip of the part being held, so the moment the part's edge touches the side of a hole during insertion, the part automatically shifts sideways and tilts to align itself, rather than jamming. It needs no force sensor and no active compliance control (a control algorithm that regulates contact force) — the mechanical structure alone absorbs a few millimeters of position error — and it's still used in industrial assembly today. In learning-based assembly research, it's commonly compared against active compliance control.

ExampleWhen a robot arm inserts a pin into a tightly toleranced hole, adding an RCC device between the flange and the gripper lets a slightly misaligned pin slide in instead of jamming at the opening.

Also called

RCC

Related

Peg-in-Hole Insertion · Compliance · Compliance Control · Impedance Control · Robotic Assembly

Sources

Remote center compliance - Wikipedia