Collaborative Object Transportation by Multiple Robots with Onboard Object Localization Algorithm

Collaborative object transportation has become a popular study trend with its remarkable application foreground. In previous relevant studies, localization of the transported object has always been accomplished by additional devices rather than robot onboard equipments. This paper presents a generalized multi-robot leader-follower system for collaborative object transportation and an onboard object localization algorithm for trajectory tracking of the target object. In this system, the mobile robots can directly push a cubic object without extra gripping devices, when tracking the reference trajectory. During the control process, the object is regarded as an virtual leader, whose localization information is utilized as the feedback, while the mobile robots are considered as the followers. In absence of external localization systems, the proposed onboard localization algorithm provides the real-time position information of the object using scan data from lidars equipped on the robots. A performed measurement accuracy test shows high precision of this algorithm. Finally, a lane-changing experiment of object transportation is conducted, and it verifies this multi-robot leader-follower system.