Switching control of underactuated multi-channel systems with input constraints for cooperative manipulation

Abstract

This work presents an event-triggered switching control framework for a class of nonlinear underactuated multi-channel systems with input constraints. These systems are inspired by cooperative manipulation tasks involving underactuation, where multiple underactuated agents collaboratively push or pull an object to a target pose. Unlike existing approaches for multi-channel systems, our method addresses underactuation and the potential loss of controllability by additionally addressing channel assignment of agents. To simultaneously account for channel assignment, input constraints, and stabilization, we formulate the control problem as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming and derive sufficient conditions for its feasibility. To improve real-time computation efficiency, we introduce an event-triggered control scheme that maintains stability even between switching events through a quadratic programming-based stabilizing controller. We theoretically establish the semi-global exponential stability of the proposed method and the asymptotic stability of its extension to nonprehensile cooperative manipulation under noninstantaneous switching. The proposed framework is further validated through numerical simulations on 2D and 3D free-flyer systems and multi-robot nonprehensile pushing tasks.