Distributed cooperative control for mobile manipulators: a rigid formation-based method

This paper addresses the distributed control problem of networked mobile manipulators (NMMs) in cooperative transportation with 2D formations. The rigid formation control method is considered for the end-effectors to realize the cooperative transportation of rigid bodies. The dynamics of the mobile manipulator is decoupled into the task-space and the null-space. In the task-space, the end-effectors of NMMs are considered as the nodes of a rigid formation while the cooperative transportation is formulated as a rigid formation tracking control problem of end-effectors. Then, a distributed distance-based controller is proposed to reach the directed rigid formation. In the null-space, the mobile base is controlled to track the desired trajectory. Numerical simulation demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed control method.