Cooperative estimation of geometrical placement by decentralized autonomous robots as an inter-robot service

ldquoUniversal unipodsrdquo - it is a decentralized robots system for universal object transportation, which has been proposed by the authors. In this paper, the authors extends its ability by giving a new feature of estimating relative geometrical placement of each robot aiming at smooth and efficient object handling. The way of estimations are very simple by ldquoshakingrdquo the object to observe its motion. However, because robots of proposed system are mechanically connected each other and system dynamics is changed by each agent, which makes it difficult to perform estimation. Then, the authors propose two types of cooperative estimation methods. In both methods, all agents except an estimator act no to distrub the estimation cooperatively. Their validities are discussed through computer simulations.