Configuration control of a mobile manipulator in pushing operation

The mobile manipulator considered consists of two subsystems: a wheeled mobile robot and a manipulator arm. These systems have different dynamic characteristics. Moreover, a wheeled mobile robot is subject to nonholonomic constraints. In general, these issues are taken into consideration in developing a planning and control algorithm. This paper describes a unified approach to control a mobile manipulator which can be regarded as a redundant manipulator. In the proposed approach realizing an optimal configuration control according to the desired task, the redundancy of the proposed system is utilized under consideration of the dynamical behaviour of the mobile manipulator. The task of "pushing operation" is to accomplish the movement of an object from one place to the desired arrangement. Several experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.