Mobile robot navigation has stood as an open and challenging problem over decades. Despite the number of significant results obtained in this field, people still look for better solutions. Some mobile robots are subject to constraints of rolling without slipping and thus belong to non-holonomic systems. Mobile robots also are subject to navigate in environments cluttered with obstacles. Now, in...

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...

Increasing the flexibility of robot systems has been one of the main objectives of robotics research in recent years. There are various approaches to achieve this: increasing fault-tolerance on different levels, the development of sophisticated sensors, grippers and manipulators and the use of learning techniques. But the field of operation of such smart systems is still limited to a rather sma...

This paper presents an analysis and design method for human/robot integrated systems, especially for the coordination of human and robot formations based on a group of distributed mobile manipulators. The key for the human/robot integrated system is to create a common motion reference that can be understood by both human and the robots in the formation. First, the perceptive reference frame is ...

Parallel manipulators (PMs) have been the subject of study, of much robotic research during the past three decades. A parallel manipulator (PM) is a closed loop kinematic chain mechanism, that is connected to the base via multiple independent chains. The scope of this research work is to perform the position analyses of the three degrees of freedom PMs (TRIPOD and TRI-GLIDE). The present work h...

We describe a framework and control algorithms for coordinating multiple mobile robots with manipulators focusing on tasks that require grasping, manipulation and transporting large and possibly flexible objects without special purpose fixtures. Because each robot has an independent controller and is autonomous, the coordination and synergy are realized through sensing and communication. The ro...

In the paper we present new control algorithms for a special class of mobile manipulators, namely for nonholonomic mobile manipulators. A mobile manipulator is defined as a robotic system composed of a mobile platform and a manipulator mounted on the platform equipped with non-deformable wheels. Such a combined system is able to perform manipulation tasks in a much larger workspace than a fixed...

We extend the standard de nition of manipulability to the case of a nonholonomic mobile manipulator built from an n joint robotic arm and a nonholonomic mobile platform. The e ects of mounting the arm on a nonholonomic platform are shown through the analysis of the manipulability thus de ned. Applications of criteria inherited from manipulability considerations are given to justify design and t...

This paper describes our work on Desktop Robotics. The main focus is two robots that locomote and manipulate paper on a desktop. One robot uses wheels for both manipulation and locomotion. The other robot uses wheels for locomotion and a sticky foot to lift and carry pieces of paper. We outline the goals of our work on desktop robotics, describe the design of the robots built so far, present ex...

Research for ezecuting large-scale motions of mobile manipulators is described. Mobile manipulator" are mobile bases with an attached arm which function in an integrated manner. Motivation i, given for moving the arm while the base i, moving. Thi, work applies reactive control concept, to achieve this type of motion. Tools for modeling Integrated arm-vehicle kinematics' and dynamics are di,cuss...