Distributed position control method for a hyper-redundant modular manipulator

According to the multi-agent system theory and characteristics of the structural distribution of hyper-redundant modular manipulator, we establish the distributed control system for a hyper-redundant modular manipulator. Each of the joint module is considered as an intelligent agent. Since the relations among agents are tightly coupled and each agent has no local subtask, agents need to coordinate their actions constantly in order to complete their tasks. We present a new negotiation and cooperation control algorithm. The proposed method is applied to a 2-dimensional hyper-redundant modular manipulator with rotational joints. The effectiveness of the method are confirmed by computer simulations.