Multi-agent control architecture of mobile manipulators: Extraction of 3D coordinates of object using an eye-in-hand camera

This research is part of the development of a multi-agent control architecture of mobile manipulators. The control architecture consists of six agents: Supervisory, Local Mobile Robot, Local Manipulator Robot, Vision System, Remote Mobile Robot and Remote Manipulator Robot. The first four agents are installed on an off-board PC while the two others are installed on the on-board PC of the robot. This paper proposes the development of the Vision System agent in order to give the robot the ability to manipulate in an indoor environment. It presents a position-based control of mobile manipulators with a single camera mounted at its end-effector (eye-in-hand camera). The cooperative manipulation can be carried out due to messages exchanged between the various agents of the control architecture (3D coordinates of object, joints angles of the manipulator for capturing images, current position coordinates and orientation angle of the mobile base, etc.). Experimental results, using the RobuTER/ULM mobile manipulator, are presented to verify the correctness, the effectiveness and the performances of the implemented agent.