Controlling Dual - Arm Manipulation of Flexible Loads inSurface -

The control of a dual-arm robotic system in a manipulation task involving a exible load is considered in this paper. The task consists of following an environment surface without loss of contact. In contrast to other schemes for control of environment interaction, the method used here is purely kinematic, taking advantage of load exibility for keeping contact with the surface. A kinematic description of the load is obtained from a lumped-parameter model. The control scheme adopted uses the pseudoinverse of the Jacobian from the tip of the load to the generalized coordinates that describe the system. The main issue with the control strategy is the use of connguration redundancy to accomplish task requirements. A method for translating task requirements into control speciications is presented, which extends existing results in pseudo-inversion techniques to constrained robotic systems.