Transportation of a single object by multiple decentralized-controlled nonholonomic mobile robots

Abstract

We propose a decentralized control algorithm for transporting a single object by multiple nonholonomic mobile robots. We extend the leader-follower type control algorithm, proposed by Kosuge and Oosumi (1996) for holonomic robots, to nonholonomic mobile robots by attaching a passive sliding mechanism to each follower. The extended control algorithm is experimentally applied to three tracked mobile robots, and the experimental results illustrate the validity of the extended control algorithm.