Potential field methods are rapidly gaining popularity in obstacle avoidance applications for mobile robots and manipulators. While the potential field principle is particularly attractive because of its elegance and simplicity, substantial shortcomings have been identified as problems that are inherent to this principle. Based upon mathematical analysis, this paper presents a systematic critic...

Mobile manipulator systems, comprised of a mobile platform with one or more manipulators, are of great interest in a number of applications. This paper presents a planning and control methodology for such systems allowing them to follow simultaneously desired end-effector and platform trajectories without violating the nonholonomic constraints. Based on a reduction of system dynamics, a model-b...

This paper presents a new discretization method for the computation of the orientation workspace of 6DOF parallel manipulators, de®ned as the set of all attainable orientations of the mobile platform about a ®xed point. The method is based on the use of a modi®ed set of Euler angles and a particular representation of the orientation workspace. In addition, the projected orientation workspace is...

Manipulation is a key capability for mobile robots to perform a greater variety of useful tasks. In this paper, we consider mobile robots equipped with low degree-of-freedom “palm manipulators.” The advantage of using this sort of nonprehensile (i.e. nongrasping) manipulator is its simplicity and versatility. Although in general multiple robots may be needed, the initial work described in this ...

 This paper presents a Hybrid System Framework which considers simultaneously the lower-level control and decision-making issues. This reconfigurable framework can accommodate a wide range of situations, from aircraft control systems to mobile manipulators. A continuous-state plant is supervised by a discrete-event system which is based on a theory of linked finite state machines. The composit...

Mobile manipulators have the potential to revolutionize modern agriculture, logistics and manufacturing. In this work, we present design of a ground-based mobile manipulator for automated structure assembly. The proposed system is capable autonomous localization, grasping, transportation deployment construction material in semi-structured environment. Special effort was put into making invarian...

Abstract: This paper discusses the trajectory-following issues for autonomous redundant non-holonomic mobile modular manipulators. An integrated dynamic modelling method is proposed. A Robust Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Controller (RANFC) is presented to control the end-effector to follow desired spacial trajectories. The proposed algorithm provides a new solution to stabilise redundant robotic self-...

In a distributed robot system, asynchronous and synchronous communication between the system components is necessary to guarantee problem soliving capability in realtime. On that account, the distributed control architecure of the Karlsruhe Autonomous Mobile Robot KAMRO which is being developed at IPR has been extended by these communication kinds. The robot system consists of several subcompon...

The present paper shows a systematic approach to modeling and control mobile manipulators that transforms the problem to the modeling of a stationary manipulator stationary with nonholonomic kinematic constraints on the joints. The task-space control consists in an internal compensator of the dynamics of the mobile manipulator and an external proportional–derivative (PD) control with feed-forwa...