Decentralized control method for a welding mobile manipulator

This paper discusses about a decentralized motion control method of a mobile manipulator which uses in welding fields. The structure of the mobile manipulator consists of a three-link manipulator and a two-wheeled mobile platform. The task of the manipulator is to take the torch which is assembled on the third link tracks along the welding trajectory to perform the welding process. The task of the mobile platform is to move so that the manipulator's configuration goes away from the singularity. In order to apply the decentralized control method, we divide the mobile manipulator into two subsystems such as the manipulator and the mobile platform. Two controllers for two subsystems were designed, and the relationships between two independent controllers are its state information. The simulation and experimental results proves the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.