COORDINATION AND DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION OF MULTIPLE MOBILE MANIPULATORS

Mobile manipulation capabilities are key to many new applications of r obotics in space, underwater, construction, and service environments. This article discusses the ongoing effort at Stanford University for t he development of multiple mobile manipulation systems and presents th e basic models and methodologies for their analysis and control. This work builds on four methodologies we have previously developed for fix ed-base manipulation: the Operational Space Formulation for task-orien ted robot motion and force control; the Dextrous Dynamic Coordination of Macro/Mini structures for increased mechanical bandwidth of robot s ystems; the Augmented Object Model for the manipulation of objects in a robot system with multiple arms; and the Virtual Linkage Model for t he characterization and control of internal forces in a multi-arm syst em. We present the extension of these methodologies to mobile manipula tion systems and propose a new decentralized control structure for coo perative tasks. The article also discusses experimental results obtain ed with two holonomic mobile manipulation platforms we have designed a nd constructed at Stanford University. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc .