Motion planning of multiple mobile robots cooperatively transporting a common object

Many applications above the capability of a single robot need the cooperation of multiple mobile robots, but effective cooperation is hard to achieve. In this paper, a master-slave method is proposed to control the motions of multiple mobile robots that cooperatively transport a common object from a start point to a goal point. A nonholonomic kinematic model to constrain the motions of multiple mobile robots is built in order to achieve cooperative motions of them, and a `Dynamic Coordinator' strategy is used to deal with the collision-avoidance of the master robot and slave robot individually. Simulation results show the robustness and effectiveness of the method.