Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition
In this work, we consider the autonomous object transportation problem employing a team of mobile manipulators within a compact planar workspace with obstacles. As the object is allowed to translate and rotate and each robot is equipped with a manipulator consisting of one or more moving links, the...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2022-12-01
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| Series: | Robotics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/11/6/148 |
| _version_ | 1797455389925572608 |
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| author | Panagiotis Vlantis Charalampos P. Bechlioulis Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos |
| author_facet | Panagiotis Vlantis Charalampos P. Bechlioulis Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos |
| author_sort | Panagiotis Vlantis |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In this work, we consider the autonomous object transportation problem employing a team of mobile manipulators within a compact planar workspace with obstacles. As the object is allowed to translate and rotate and each robot is equipped with a manipulator consisting of one or more moving links, the overall system (object and mobile manipulators) should adapt its shape in a flexible way so that it fulfills the transportation task with safety. To this end, we built a sequence of configuration space cells, each of which defines an allowable set of configurations of the object, as well as explicit intervals for each manipulator’s states. Furthermore, appropriately designed under- and over-approximations of the free configuration space are used in an innovative way to guide the configuration space’s exploration without loss of completeness. In addition, we coupled methodologies based on Reference Governors and Prescribed Performance Control with harmonic maps, in order to design a distributed control law for implementing the transitions specified by the high-level planner, which possesses guaranteed invariance and global convergence properties, thus avoiding the requirement for synchronized motion as inherently dictated by the majority of the related works. Furthermore, the proposed low-level control law does not require continuous information exchange between the robots, which rely only on measurements of the object’s configuration and their own states. Finally, a transportation scenario within a complex warehouse workspace demonstrates the proposed approach and verifies its efficiency. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T15:53:43Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-9437b138407644c6928df43659d10711 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2218-6581 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T15:53:43Z |
| publishDate | 2022-12-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Robotics |
| spelling | doaj.art-9437b138407644c6928df43659d107112023-11-24T17:50:41ZengMDPI AGRobotics2218-65812022-12-0111614810.3390/robotics11060148Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space DecompositionPanagiotis Vlantis0Charalampos P. Bechlioulis1Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, 26504 Rio, GreeceDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, 26504 Rio, GreeceSchool of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15772 Athens, GreeceIn this work, we consider the autonomous object transportation problem employing a team of mobile manipulators within a compact planar workspace with obstacles. As the object is allowed to translate and rotate and each robot is equipped with a manipulator consisting of one or more moving links, the overall system (object and mobile manipulators) should adapt its shape in a flexible way so that it fulfills the transportation task with safety. To this end, we built a sequence of configuration space cells, each of which defines an allowable set of configurations of the object, as well as explicit intervals for each manipulator’s states. Furthermore, appropriately designed under- and over-approximations of the free configuration space are used in an innovative way to guide the configuration space’s exploration without loss of completeness. In addition, we coupled methodologies based on Reference Governors and Prescribed Performance Control with harmonic maps, in order to design a distributed control law for implementing the transitions specified by the high-level planner, which possesses guaranteed invariance and global convergence properties, thus avoiding the requirement for synchronized motion as inherently dictated by the majority of the related works. Furthermore, the proposed low-level control law does not require continuous information exchange between the robots, which rely only on measurements of the object’s configuration and their own states. Finally, a transportation scenario within a complex warehouse workspace demonstrates the proposed approach and verifies its efficiency.https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/11/6/148object transportationcooperative controlmobile manipulator |
| spellingShingle | Panagiotis Vlantis Charalampos P. Bechlioulis Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition Robotics object transportation cooperative control mobile manipulator |
| title | Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition |
| title_full | Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition |
| title_fullStr | Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition |
| title_full_unstemmed | Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition |
| title_short | Mutli-Robot Cooperative Object Transportation with Guaranteed Safety and Convergence in Planar Obstacle Cluttered Workspaces via Configuration Space Decomposition |
| title_sort | mutli robot cooperative object transportation with guaranteed safety and convergence in planar obstacle cluttered workspaces via configuration space decomposition |
| topic | object transportation cooperative control mobile manipulator |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2218-6581/11/6/148 |
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