A pushing leader based decentralized control method for cooperative object transportation

Abstract

In this paper, we address a decentralized control method for object transportation in coordination by using a leader-follower type multiple robot system, which consist of a pushing leader, a leader robot without grasping mechanisms, and multiple follower robots. During the object transportation, a desired trajectory is given to the leader robot only, and follower robots estimate the trajectory of the leader based on force/moment from the object. In the proposed system, a variable internal force is introduced to each robot's controller in decentralized style to let the follower's estimator work on not only the pushing but also the "pulling" case that the leader needs to slow down or move back the object. Finally, a multiple robot system including three omni-directional mobile robots is presented and experiment results are shown to illustrate the concept of the proposed control algorithm.