Experiments in nonsmooth control of distributed manipulation

This paper describes an experimental modular distributed manipulation system upon which one can implement a variety of control schemes. We have shown elsewhere that when one includes the nonsmooth effects of friction into a model of distributed manipulation, nonsmooth feedback laws must generally be used to control distributed manipulators. We summarize results obtained with this experimental system that confirm the validity of control schemes proposed by the authors in recent papers. We describe the control algorithms in some detail and include specifics of the experimental set-up and experimental results.