Decentralized control of multiple robots handling an object

Abstract

We propose a decentralized control algorithm of multiple robots handling a single object in coordination. The motion command of the object is given to one of the robots, referred to as a leader, and the other robots referred to as followers estimate the motion of the leader by themselves through the motion of the object and handle the object based on the estimated reference. Each robot is controlled by its own controller without explicit communication among robots. Different from the conventional leader-follower type of robot control algorithms, the proposed control algorithm specifies the internal force applied to the object, while handling the object in coordination based on robot dynamics. The proposed control algorithm is experimentally applied to a one degree of freedom mobile robot, and the results illustrate the validity of the proposed control algorithm.