Simultaneous local motion planning and control for cooperative redundant arms

Abstract

We propose a scheme to deal simultaneously with local motion planning and dynamic control of redundant cooperative robots subject to holonomic, posture and loop-closure constraints. In contrast to previous contributions, an iterative method, that glue together the problem of kinematic motion planning with dynamic control, generates the sequence of feasible collision-free motions by combining in a single strategy the task-priority redundancy formalism with a joint model-free smooth force-motion control scheme based on a well-posed projection, which allows motions of the system only in the tangent subspace of the contact constrained manifold. Overall the new algorithm is able to compute fast and accurately local solutions involving severely constrained robotic motions. We have successfully verified in simulations the effectiveness of the proposed iterative method in the context of cooperative manipulation tasks.