Distributed Kinematic Control and Trajectory Scaling for Multi-Manipulator Systems in Presence of Human Operators

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to devise a general framework for handling the human safety in a multi-robot work-cell controlled within a decentralized framework. The paper is motivated by the increasing demand coming from new production paradigms for strict cooperation between humans and robots and for flexibility and robustness provided by decentralized control frameworks. The cell foresees several robots with different assigned roles. In particular, it is supposed that there are worker agents, that are in charge of performing the cooperative manipulation task, and watcher robots, that are in charge of supervising the cell with particular attention to the human safety. The latter is guaranteed by properly modifying the workers' task trajectory according to a state transition strategy that tries to preserve the task path as much as possible. The overall solution is tested via simulations in order to show the effectiveness of results.