Indentification of the center of friction from pushing an object by a mobile robot

Abstract

When mobile robots convey objects on a floor by pushing them, the motion of the pushed object is closely related to the distribution of the frictional force between the object and the floor. When the pushing force vector applied to an object passes through the center of friction which is the centroid of the friction distribution, the motion of the object is a pure translation. The authors describe a method for estimating the friction distribution of an object and the position of the center of friction by pushing the object several times using a manipulator mounted on a mobile robot, which also has a visual sensor. Simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the approach.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>