Adaptive Resolution of Conflicts in Multimanipulator Systems

The main problem of controlling a multiple manipulator system is the conflicting actions between the manipulators. This conflicting action is often due to geometric modeling error or, in the case of independently controlled system, mismatch between the reference trajectories of the controllers. The proposed control scheme resolves the conflicting actions via a `mutual learning´ process. The adaptive mechanism of each controller modifies its reference trajectory so as to adapt to others. It is shown that a common reference trajectory will eventually be reached by all the controllers. This adaptation process is carried out without explicit communication between the controllers. The proposed scheme was verified by computer simulations and experiments on a dual-manipulator system.