A Force Couple Approach for Cooperative Object Pushing of Rod Object with Multiple Robots

摘要

Robots have been developed and used for addressing the intricate tasks present in the society. A single robot is not adequate when problem scenarios become complex. In such situations, a better solution could be achieved by efficiently employing multiple robots. The efficiency is achieved through the appropriate interactions of these robots. Cooperative object transportation with multiple robots is a miniature version of a real-world problem that a multi-robot system (MRS) should accomplish. A number of solutions have been proposed for this particular research problem from the early emergence of the MRS domain. But most of the solutions are focused on the transportation of box type object and hence the results could not be applicable to other object types. In cooperative object transportation problem, the transportation of a narrow rod type object with multiple robots has got very limited attention. In this work, a force-couple approach is proposed for the effective transportation of rod type objects with multiple robots and the effectiveness of the proposed solution is validated with the help of a 2D dynamic multi-robot simulator.