Fuzzy control for mobile manipulation

Increasing the flexibility of robot systems has been one of the main objectives of robotics research in recent years. There are various approaches to achieve this: increasing fault-tolerance, the development of new actuators and sensors and the use of learning techniques. But the field of operation of such smart systems is still limited to a rather small area. Mobile manipulation is another facet of increasing the flexibility of a robot system. By exploiting the mobility of a platform, the dextrous workspace of manipulators can be considerably increased. One main research topic on mobile manipulation is the decomposition of the motion of the tool-centre-point into manipulator motion and platform motion. In this paper a new online approach to this decomposition is presented which allows the consideration of complex obstacles and multiple manipulators mounted on the platform. A focus of this paper is the presentation of a fuzzy-controller that enables the robot to perform manipulation and locomotion in an integrated manner.