A method to characterize and exploit actuation redundancy in mobility and manipulation

Actuation redundancy is common in cooperative mobility and cooperative manipulation systems. In this paper we present an extension to a previously developed method in order to characterize and exploit redundancy. Our idea is based on the introduction of a virtual linkage in the system to be able to determine the null hyperplane in the actuation force space. We then exploit the null directions to optimize critical design limits. We first demonstrate the development of this approach with a 3-robot cooperative mobility system and then we apply the approach to analyze actuation redundancy in a manipulation system.