Manipulation of an irregularly shaped object by two mobile robots

Fast transition from a stable initial state to a stable handling state is important when multiple mobile robots manipulate and transport a heavy and bulky object. In this paper, a cooperative system consisting of two mobile robots was designed to realize fast transition. A gripper robot grasps and lifts an object from one side to provide enough space for a lifter robot to lift the object. Fast transition can be formulated as an optimization problem. We propose an algorithm to realize fast transition based on the cooperative system designed. The experimental results illustrate the validity of the proposed method.

[1]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  ALLIANCE: an architecture for fault tolerant multirobot cooperation , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[2]  Hisashi Osumi Design of Cooperative System Consisting of Multiple Position Controlled Robots , 2000 .

[3]  Bruce Randall Donald,et al.  Distributed manipulation of multiple objects using ropes , 2000 .

[4]  Jun Ota,et al.  Motion planning of multiple mobile robots for Cooperative manipulation and transportation , 2003, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[5]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Object closure and manipulation by multiple cooperating mobile robots , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[6]  Bruce Randall Donald,et al.  Information Invariants for Distributed Manipulation , 1995, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  Gabriel Ramírez-Torres,et al.  Motion Planning for Cooperative Multi-robot Box-Pushing Problem , 2008, IBERAMIA.

[8]  Jean Ponce,et al.  A new approach to motion planning for disc-shaped robots manipulating a polygonal object in the plane , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[9]  Kazuhiro Kosuge,et al.  Dynamic Object Closure by Multiple Mobile Robots and Random Caging Formation Testing , 2006, 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[10]  Qingguo Li,et al.  Manipulation of Convex Objects via Two-agent Point-contact Push , 2007, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[11]  Jean Ponce,et al.  On grasping and manipulating polygonal objects with disc-shaped robots in the plane , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[12]  Hisashi Osumi Design of Cooperative System Consisting of Multiple Position Controlled Robots. , 1999 .

[13]  Eric Bonabeau,et al.  Cooperative transport by ants and robots , 2000, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[14]  Kazuhiro Kosuge,et al.  Trajectory Generation for Multiple Robots of a Car Transportation System , 2008, DARS.

[15]  Jun Ota,et al.  Dexterous Assembly Manipulation of a Compact Array of Objects , 1998 .

[16]  Bruce Randall Donald,et al.  Moving furniture with teams of autonomous robots , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human Robot Interaction and Cooperative Robots.