Collaborative Object Manipulation Through Indirect Control of a Deformable Sheet by a Mobile Robotic Team

Abstract

Using deformable sheets to handle objects are convenient and found in many applications. This paper presents a novel design to collaboratively move an object that is held by a deformable sheet attached to a multi-robot team. One challenge in these applications is to design a collaborative multirobot motion control to keep the object under certain motion constraints. We first present the object motion models and restrictions as a set of geometric and kinematic properties of the robotic team. A formation control scheme is presented to incorporate these motion constraints and the stability under the control design is also guaranteed. Finally, we demonstrate the design and performance using a group of three omni-directional mobile robots to conduct manipulation experiments.