Cooperative control between multiple manipulators with flexibility

This paper proposes a new algorithm for the manipulation of a rigid object by cooperative control of multiple flexible manipulators. Assuming that the flexibility exists only at the force sensor attached to the tip of the manipulator, each manipulator is modeled as a rigid manipulator with six springs at the tip. A cooperative control algorithm considering the flexibility is proposed. After the differential equation of the error vector of the system is derived, the method of determining the feedback gain matrices is shown for linearizing the system. To verify the efficiency of the algorithm, the experiments are done on carrying an object held by two parallel flexible beams