3-DOF potential air flow manipulation by inverse modeling control

Potential air flows can be used to perform non-prehensile contactless manipulations of objects gliding on air-hockey table. In this paper, we introduce a general method able to perform 3-DOF position control of an object with potential air flow manipulators. This approach is based on an inverse modeling control scheme to perform closed-loop position servoing. We propose to use a linear programming algorithm to determine which sinks have to be activated in order to produce the suitable potential air flow to obtain the desired object motion. This approach is then validated on an experimental manipulator.