Title: Adaptive coordinated control of multi-mobile manipulator systems

Authors: Abdelkrim Brahmi; Maarouf Saad; Guy Gauthier; Wen-Hong Zhu; Jawhar Ghommam

Addresses: Electrical Engineering Department, Université du Québec, École de technologie supérieure, 1100 Notre-Dame Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3C 1K3, Canada ' Electrical Engineering Department, Université du Québec, École de technologie supérieure, 1100 Notre-Dame Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3C 1K3, Canada ' Electrical Engineering Department, Université du Québec, École de technologie supérieure, 1100 Notre-Dame Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3C 1K3, Canada ' Space Exploration, Canadian Space Agency; 6767 route de l'Aéroport, Saint-Hubert, J3Y 8Y9, Canada ' Ecole National d'Ingénieurs de Sfax, Research Unit on Mechatronics and Automation Systems, BPW, 3038 Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract: This paper presents an adaptive coordinated control scheme for multiple mobile manipulator robots (MMR) moving a rigid object in coordination. The dynamic parameters of the object handled and of the mobile manipulators are considered unknown but constant. The control law and the adaptation of uncertain parameters are designed using the virtual decomposition (VDC) approach. This control approach was originally applied to multiple manipulator robot systems. The proposed control design ensures that the position error in the workspace converges to zero, and that the external force error is bounded. The global stability of the system using VDC is proven through the virtual stability of each subsystem. Numerical simulations and an experimental validation are carried out for two mobile manipulators transporting an object, and are compared with the results obtained using the computed torque approach in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

Keywords: adaptive control; coordinated control; virtual decomposition control; VDC; multi-mobile manipulator.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDSSS.2017.087243

International Journal of Digital Signals and Smart Systems, 2017 Vol.1 No.1, pp.3 - 25

Received: 06 Sep 2016
Accepted: 24 Oct 2016
Published online: 11 Oct 2017 *

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