Firm Standing for Legged Mobile Manipulators

Abstract

A mobile manipulator generates external force on its hand when it works, making it unable to conduct work accurately because the robot becomes unstable, unlike human beings, who stand stably despite a large hand force acting on their hands. This uses redundant degrees of freedom (DOF) that freely change the body’s position and orientation even if legs are fixed. We focus on a legged robot as a part of locomotion and propose firm standing using a legged mobile manipulator that tolerates greater hand force while maintaining a stable working position. This report proposes firm standing, analyzes it on a two-dimensional vertical plane and in three-dimensional space, and details experiments that demonstrate its feasibility.