Modeling and simulation of cooperative transport of an object by two mobile manipulators on an uneven terrain using KSOM network

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a learning-based method for cooperative load transport by two 16 DOF wheeled mobile manipulators (MM) on a rough surface is proposed. Each MM has a 10 DOF mobile platform with a six DOF manipulator on top of it. As the MM system is redundant, the standard pseudo inverse or Jacobian methods for finding the inverse kinematics solution cannot be used in real time. Thus, an advanced Kohonen self-organizing map (KSOM) network is used to learn the inverse kinematic mapping and resolve the redundancy of the MMs. Considering the nonholonomic constraints of the vehicle and manipulability measure of the manipulator, the forward kinematic model of the MM system is used to train the network. A user defined object path governs the end effector paths of the two MMs for carrying the object and the trained network resolves the redundancy of the MMs to follow the respective end effector paths. The advantage of the proposed method is that once a terrain is learned, multiple MMs can be simulated to carry an object together in real time, without complex inverse kinematics. Simulation results show the usefulness of the proposed method.

KEYWORDS:

• KSOM network
• cooperative object transport
• mobile manipulator
• inverse kinematics learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beteley Teka

Beteley Teka received his bachelor's degree in Instrumentation Technology from Defence Engineering College, Debrezeit Ethiopia in 2008. He joined in the same institute as an assistant lecturer in 2008 and then completed his Masters degree from National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India in 2012. He again joined Defence Engineering College, Debrezeit Ethiopia as a lecturer and worked there till 2014. He received his PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India in April 2019. Currently he is an Assistant professor in the department of Electronics Engineering, Defence Engineering College Debrezeit Ethiopia. His research interests are in robotics and mechatronics with focus on control and motion planning of mobile manipulator systems and intelligent control systems.

Ashish Dutta

Ashish Dutta obtained his PhD in Systems Engineering from Akita University, Japan, M.Tech from Jadavpur University and B.Tech from NIT Calicut, India. From 1994 to 2000 he was with the Bhabha Atomic Research Center where he worked on telemanipulator design and control for nuclear applications. Since 2002 he is with the department of mechanical engineering at IIT Kanpur, India. He was also a visiting professor in Nagoya University, Japan in 2006 and is currently a visiting professor at Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan(2015 -). His research interests are in the areas of humanoid robotics, micro sensors and actuators, intelligent control systems and rehabilitation engineering.