In this paper, we examine the development of a decentralized control framework for a modular system of wheeled mobile manipulators that can team up to cooperatively transport a large common object. Each individually autonomous mobile manipulator consists of a differentially-driven wheeled mobile robot (WMR) with a passive, two-degree-of-freedom, planar, revolute-jointed arm mounted in the plane...

This paper describes a concept for measuring the reproducible performance of mobile manipulators to be used for assembly or other similar tasks. An automatic guided vehicle with an onboard robot arm was programmed to repeatedly move to and stop at a novel, reconfigurable mobile manipulator artifact (RMMA), sense the RMMA, and detect targets on the RMMA. The manipulator moved a laser retroreflec...

In this paper, a trajectory planning method of a mobile manipulator is presented. We derive the dynamics of the mobile manipulator considering it as the combined system of the manipulator and the mobile platform. The planning problem is formulated as an optimal control problem. To solve the problem, we use the concept of the order of priority. A gradient-based iterative algorithm which synthesi...

This paper presents a modeling method for a mobile modular manipulator (MMM) interacting with the environment, which is composed of a mobile base and a 5-DOF manipulator. A tactile sensor, which is installed at the tip of the end-e ector of the mobile manipulator, is to detect the feedback information from the environment. The dynamic equations are formulated and the controller is proposed with...

A mobile manipulator is a robotic arm mounted on a mobile robot; a particular example is a manipulator arm on a mobile robot with differential traction. Mobile manipulators have many advantages over stationary manipulator, such as a larger work space than a stationary manipulator could have in practice. This paper shows a systematic approach to modeling mobile manipulators that transforms the p...

This paper proposes a vision‐based autonomous move‐to‐grasp approach for a compact mobile manipulator under some low and small environments. The visual information of specified object with a radial symbol and an overhead colour block is extracted from two CMOS cameras in an embedded way. Furthermore, the mobile platform and the postures of the manipulator are adjusted continu...

A mobile manipulator is defined as a robotic system composed of a nonholonomic mobile platform and a holonomic manipulator fixed to the platform. The kinematics of the mobile manipulator, describing velocity constraints imposed on the platform and determining actual position and orientation of the end effector, are represented by a driftless control system with outputs. The motion planning prob...

This paper presents dynamic analysis studies of planar parallel flexible 3-RRR manipulator with and without considering the flexibility of mobile platform. Initially, by treating all the members of the manipulator as flexible, the joint displacements, reaction forces and stresses are obtained during a specified trajectory tracking in Cartesian space. A comparative study is conducted with manipu...

This paper analyses the reasons for resulting in the instability of mobile manipulator. Several methods of stability analysis and errors compensation are introduced, including the theories, the modeling processes and their characteristics. The significance of analysing the stability and compensating the errors are expounded. In addition, the corresponding applications are also discussed. Finall...

In this paper, a combined control of a mobile manipulator is studied, the platform is velocity controlled and the manipulator is torque controlled. Our objective is to develop a control method which generates the adequate articular torques and kinematics control to move the end-effector and the platform for executing the task efficiently without any collisions between the mobile manipulator (ma...