This paper presents the development of an interactive and user-friendly environment for simulation and control of flexible manipulator systems. A constrained planer single-link flexible manipulator is considered. A simulation algorithm characterising the dynamic behaviour of the manipulator is developed using finite difference methods. Several open-loop and closed-loop control strategies are de...

The stability of holonomic mobile manipulator can be improved effectively based on the stability twist constraint (STC). However, nonholonomic mobile manipulators are much more popular. In this paper, the stability of a nonholonomic mobile manipulator is improved with STC consideration. However, the constraint of nonholonomic mobility will affect the orientation of mobile base. Numerical simula...

In this study, we focus on the intelligent behavior of an octopus and describe the development of a flexible manipulator. By using the developed manipulator, we show that grasping behaviors similar to those of an octopus can be realized by the dynamics of the body without computation in its brain. Keywords-flexible manipulator; octopus; many degrees of freedom; grasping.

The paper deals with obstacle avoidance for a mobile manipulator. Mobile manipulator consists of a velocity controlled mobile platform and a torque controlled robot manipulator. Therefore combined torque-velocity control is used. In spite of a combined control the system maintains dynamic compensation. The proposed algorithm enables obstacle avoidance in real time. The platform has integrated u...

A mobile manipulator is a robotic system consisting of a robotic manipulator mounted onto a mobile base. This greatly extends the workspace of the robotic manipulator and allows it to perform more tasks. However, combining both systems increases the complexity of the control task as well as introducing additional controller tasks such as coordination of motion, where executing the task can invo...

In the last several years, mobile manipulators have been increasingly utilized and developed from a theoretical viewpoint as well as for practical applications in space, underwater, construction and service environments. The work presented in this chapter deals with the problem of intelligent behaviour modelling and control of a mobile manipulator for the purpose of simultaneously following des...

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 presents the development of an optimal PID controller for vibration control of flexible manipulator structures using particle swarm optimization (PSO) for tuning the PID parameters. The flexible manipulator system is first modeled using finite difference (FD) approach and identification using global search of PSO. The control structure comprises conventional PID controller and an int...

The paper presents a dynamic modelling technique for a manipulator with multiple flexible links and flexible joints, based on a combined Euler–Lagrange formulation and assumed modes method. The resulting generalised model is validated through computer simulations by considering a simplified case study of a two-link flexible manipulator with joint elasticity. Controlling such a manipulator is mo...

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...