A carrying task for nonprehensile mobile manipulators

Author

Gupta, Atin ; Huang, Wesley H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Rensselaer Polytech. Inst., Troy, NY, USA

Volume

3

fYear

2003

fDate

27-31 Oct. 2003

Firstpage

2896

Abstract

Manipulation is an essential capability for mobile robots to perform many useful tasks. Our focus has been on mobile robots with nonprehensile (i.e., nongrasping) manipulators. The robots are equipped with a flat "palm" with two degrees of freedom. We have tackled the problem of carrying an object using two such mobile manipulators. Since these manipulators cannot grasp an object, each robot must support one end. However, if errors cause the separation between robots to change, the robots will drop the object. In this paper, we describe an algorithm to maintain the object contact at a nominal position on the palms by performing corrective actions. We first present analysis of the system mechanics, formulate both a centralized and a distributed algorithm for this task, and then show results of our experimental implementation.

Keywords

manipulators; mobile robots; carrying task; centralized algorithm; distributed algorithm; mobile robots; nominal position; nongrasping manipulators; nonprehensile mobile manipulators; object contact; system mechanics; two degrees of freedom; Algorithm design and analysis; Cities and towns; Computer science; Distributed algorithms; Manipulators; Mobile robots; Performance analysis; Planets; Robot sensing systems; Shape;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2003. (IROS 2003). Proceedings. 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7860-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IROS.2003.1249310

Filename

1249310