Cooperative Object Transportation Using Connected Robots

Abstract

This paper presents cooperative object transportation using connected robots. Previous studies of object transportation mainly used pushing or grasping methods to manipulate objects. A pushing method, however, cannot control the object motion precisely and a grasping method requires complicated gripping action before the transportation. Therefore, we suggest a new object transportation method which uses a rope. The method consists of three phases according to the behavior: the approaching, enclosing and transportation phases. Robots and an object have different formation controllers in accordance with their phases. Real experiments are presented to prove the validity of the proposed method.