Multi-agent prototyping for a cooperative carrying task

Many useful tasks require both mobility and manipulation; one or more mobile robots must move to a given location some manipulations. After a brief review of the current research on multi-robot systems, the paper presents a multi-agent system for carrying a large object by cooperation of two or multiple mobile manipulators from an initial to a desired final position. The multi-agent system has been developed by using the oRis platform. We present also the behaviors of each robot, their interactions, the communication protocol and obstacle avoidance behavior. Computed simulations have been conducted and some preliminary results are given to test the proposed methodology.