Hyper-Redundant Manipulator Control for Reconfigurability and Obstacle Avoidance

For manipulators to be an effective option in soft automation, they require redundancy and versatility. A typical application is motion in unpredictable surroundings such as foliage navigation in automated fruit picking. To date, centralized control architectures with real-time constraints have proven undesirable for the control of redundant systems. This paper uses a modular decentralized technique to demonstrate control of a redundant manipulator system. Advantages of the proposed approach are illustrated through redundancy, reconfigurability and fault tolerance. Results in simulation show dynamic motion path generation and obstacle avoidance capabilities in unmapped environments.