A motion control of two-wheels driven mobile manipulator for human-robot cooperative transportation

This paper proposes a control method for humanrobot cooperative transportation using two-wheels driven mobile manipulator. In the past, most of the robots which aim at cooperation with human had three or more wheels, and there is a possibility that their mobility is insufficient for human environment. Two-wheels driven mobile manipulator has excellent mobility and can realize rapid and smooth motion such as turning instantly. It has different motion characteristics depending on the configuration, because of the nonholonomic constraint of the mobile platform. And, there is a trade-off between the robot´s mobility and the robot´s stability. In this paper, to the above mentioned problem, we propose a method of configuration control of the mobile platform by setting the manipulability measure as a performance index. In the proposed method, by maximizing or minimizing the performance index depending on the situation, mobility and stability of the mobile platform in the cooperative transportation is controlled.