Coordinated motion control of multiple passive object handling robots based on environment information

In this paper, we introduce a passive mobile robot called PRP (Passive Robot Porter), which has passive dynamics with respect to an applied force and its appropriate motion is controlled based on the servo brakes. In this paper, we especially focus on a motion control algorithm of multiple passive mobile robots for handling a large object in cooperation with a human. By controlling each passive mobile robot in the decentralized way, we realize collision avoidance function and path following function of the object to improve the maneuverability for the human operator. The proposed algorithms applied to two PRPs actually, and experimental results illustrate the validity of the proposed algorithms.