A decentralized control system for cooperative transportation by multiple non-holonomic mobile robots

Xin Yang, Keigo Watanabe, Kiyotaka Izumi, Kazuo Kiguchi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a decentralized control system for transporting a single object by multiple non-holonomic mobile robots. Each agent used in the proposed system has two arms, which can steer around a joint offset from the centre point between two driving wheels. One of these mobile robots acts as a leader, who is assumed to be able to plan and to manipulate the omnidirectional motion of the object by using a resolved velocity control. Other robots, referred to as followers, cooperatively transport the object by keeping a constant relative position with the object using a simple PI control. Different from conventional leader-follower type systems that transport an object by multiple robots in coordination, the present followers can plan an action based on their local coordinate and need no absolute positional information. In addition, as a special case, a system consisting of only two robots is introduced, in which the follower robot not only has an arm length controller to follow the leader but also has a fuzzy controller as an avoidance controller to avoid obstacles or a posture controller to keep a desired posture of the object. Simulation results are given to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed systems.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)949-963
Number of pages15
JournalInternational Journal of Control
Volume77
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 10 2004
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Computer Science Applications

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A decentralized control system for cooperative transportation by multiple non-holonomic mobile robots'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this