A concept of common reference object to the cooperative transportation of multiple mobile robots

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Yang, Xin^a | Watanabe, Keigo^{b; *} | Izumi, Kiyotaka^b

Affiliations: [a] Department of Engineering Systems and Technology, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saga University, 1-Honjomachi, Saga 840-8502, Japan | [b] Department of Advanced Systems Control Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saga University, 1-Honjomachi, Saga 840-8502, Japan

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 952 28 8602; Fax: +81 952 28 8587; E-mail: watanabe@me.saga-u.ac.jp

Abstract: A concept named “common reference object” is proposed for a cooperative transportation using multiple nonholonomic mobile robots and a decentralized system is constructed to demonstrate the present concept. In this system, one agent acts as the leader which is able to plan and manipulate the omnidirectional motion of an object. Other agents referred to as followers cooperatively transport the object by keeping a constant position relative to the object. During the transportation operation, the leader robot can not only plan the motion of the object but also broadcast the local velocity of the object to other agents. Then, each follower receives such information and generates its own velocity in the local coordinate using a mapping process. In this paper, neural network (NN) and genetic algorithm (GA) are tested in identifying the mapping process. Simulation results show an acceptable performance of the present concept.

DOI: 10.3233/KES-2005-9305

Journal: International Journal of Knowledge-based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 209-221, 2005