Cooperative manipulation exploiting only implicit communication

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of cooperative object manipulation with the coordination relying solely on implicit communication. We consider a decentralized leader-follower architecture where the leading robot, that has exclusive knowledge of the object's desired trajectory, tries to achieve the desired tracking behavior via an impedance control law. On the other hand, the follower estimates the leader's desired motion via a novel prescribed performance estimation law, that drives the estimation error to an arbitrarily small residual set, and implements a similar impedance control law. Both control schemes adopt feedback linearization as well as load sharing among the robots according to their specific payload capabilities. The feedback relies exclusively on each robot's force/torque, position as well as velocity measurements and apart from a few commonly predetermined constant parameters, no explicit data is exchanged on-line among the robots, thus reducing the required communication bandwidth and increasing robustness. Finally, a comparative simulation study clarifies the proposed method and verifies its efficiency.