Design of Cooperative System Consisting of Multiple Position Controlled Robots.

Abstract

A design method of cooperative system consisting of multiple position controlled rotors is proposed. Passive joints are installed into each robot as mechanical compliance to avoid excessive inner forces caused by mutual positioning errors among robots. After the necessary kinematic constraints imposed on installed mechanical compliance for cooperation are derived, kinematic relationship between the infinitesimal displacements of robots and those of the handled object is obtained. Two cooperative systems consisting of three mobile robots are designed as cooperative mechanisms and their characteristics are analyzed. After showing that the maximum number of robots for cooperation is limited to six, a way to overcome this limitation is proposed using hierarchical structure of compliance mechanisms.