Multi-robot cooperative transportation using formation control

Considering the mass of heavy object, the paper investigates the method for multiple robots working together to realize object transportation. If the object is rigid, and robots clamp the object tightly, transportation task can be viewed as a kind of formation control problem with respect to robotspsila end-effectors. Hence from the view of formation, a decentralized control technique is developed to keep constant relative distances between end-effectors. And to tackle parameter uncertainties in robotpsilas dynamic model, an adaptive NN controller is applied to realize formation control. The theoretical analysis and the simulation verify that, by selecting control parameters properly, the position error of heavy object can be suppressed within a small range to realize cooperative transportation.