Distributed Coordination and Cooperation Control for Networked Mobile Manipulators

This paper addresses distributed coordination and cooperation control for networked mobile manipulators over a jointly connected topology with time delays. First, tracking control is proposed to guarantee the position and velocity synchronization of the networked mobile manipulators, while keeping a formation. For cooperation control, the decoupled dynamics is considered so that the task and null space of the mobile manipulators can be designed to achieve different missions. For end-effector motion, synchronization control works in combination with force controls to ensure that the network of mobile manipulators achieves cooperative manipulation and transportation. The motion of the mobile bases is controlled in the null space, which can be designed to track a trajectory, avoid colliding with obstacles, and achieve velocity consensus without influencing the main task. Numerical examples are addressed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed networked robotic system.