Position control of collision-tolerant passive mobile manipulator with base suspension characteristics

Abstract

A new concept of a robot manipulator with passive mobile base is proposed which can be safely used in a human-robot cooperation environment. A joint-based control scheme is developed to control the end-effector position of the manipulator which is tolerant to unexpected contact force with the manipulator's environment. The mobility the of base of the manipulator is passively exploited to attenuate the dynamic disturbance of the contact force and the joint configurations are re-adjusted according to the evolution of the position of the base to maintain performance of the given task. Effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by computer simulation and experimental evaluation is currently underway.