In human robot interaction systems, human intent detection plays an important role to improve the interactive performances and then the rehabilitation effects. A study is proposed to estimate the interactive forces that indirectly detect the human motion intent. A disturbance observer is designed to estimate interactive torques and friction forces without force sensors, and then a friction force model is constructed to estimate the friction force in the robot system. To detect the human–robot interaction force, we subtract the friction force from disturbance observer estimation result. Several experiments were performed to test the performances of the proposed methods. Those methods were applied in an end-effect upper limb rehabilitation robot system. The results show that the precision of the estimated sensor force can increase 5% than the force sensor. The senseless force estimation method we proposed in this article can be an alternative option in force control tasks when force sensors are not suitable.

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