Neural Network Control of Coordinated Multiple Manipulator Systems

This paper proposes a neural network (NN) based control scheme for coordinated multiple robot manipulators carrying a common object. Firstly, an integrated dynamic model of the manipulators and the object is derived in terms of object position and orientation as states of the derived model. Based on this model a controller is proposed that achieves the stability in the sense of Lyapunov for the trajectory tracking of the object as well as tracking of the desired internal forces arising in the system. A feedforward neural network is employed to learn the unknown dynamics of robot manipulators and the object. Finally, numerical simulation studies are carried for two three-link planar manipulators moving a circular disc on specified trajectory