Adaptive stabilization of mobile manipulators

This paper considers the motion control problem for uncertain mobile manipulator systems comprised of a robotic arm mounted on a wheeled mobile platform; more specifically, we address the problem of stabilizing mobile manipulators in the presence of uncertainty regarding the system dynamic model. It is proposed that a simple and effective solution to this problem can be obtained by combining ideas from homogeneous system theory and adaptive control theory. Thus the proposed control system consists of two subsystems: a (homogeneous) kinematic stabilization strategy which generates a desired velocity trajectory for the mobile manipulator, and an adaptive control scheme which ensures that this velocity trajectory is accurately tracked. This approach is shown to provide arbitrarily accurate exponential stabilization to any desired configuration, and can be implemented without knowledge of the system dynamic model