Stability control for a mobile manipulator using a potential method

Many future applications of robotic systems will require that manipulators perform operations while being carried by moving vehicles. However, such a vehicle mounted mobile manipulator can be unstable or even tip over. Previous work on stability control hardly considered the dynamics and environmental disturbances. The stability of a mobile manipulator has a close relation with the vehicle motion, manipulator motion and posture, and end-effector force. To evaluate the stability for a mobile manipulator, the concepts about stability, such as the stability degree and the valid stable region based on the zero moment point (ZMP) criterion have already been proposed. In this paper, as a control scheme for maintaining or recovering stability, the method of ZMP path planning by a stability potential field is presented, in which the concepts of the goal state and prohibitive state of stability are outlined. A motion planning algorithm is then formulated, which controls the manipulator in order to maintain the stability of the whole system while the vehicle is moving along a given trajectory