Cooperative motion planning of redundant rover manipulators on uneven terrains

Abstract

In this paper we consider the problem of cooperative motion planning for redundant mobile manipulator on uneven terrains. This approach involves formulating the trajectory planning as non-linear constrained minimization problem of joint angle movement of mobile manipulator at each instance. The main problem is to solve (i) the redundancy exist in the system considering parameters of wheel-terrain interactions, (ii) the cooperative behavior of the mobile manipulator while performing the task, and (iii) the manipulability issues. To perform task the manipulator moves towards desired location, while the mobile robot moves to enhance the manipulator task space. A weighting factors has been introduced to define the level of importance of movement of each joint of the mobile manipulator. A quality measure has been computed to measure the ability of mobile manipulator for a particular configuration. The problem of trajectory planning and redundancy resolution has been solved by Augmented Lagrangian Method (ALM). To evaluate the method several simulations have been performed. The simulation and experimental results have been presented, which shows that the method provides feasible trajectories and successfully tracks the desired end-effector path.