Force distribution equations for general tree-structured robotic mechanisms with a mobile base

An efficient formulation of the force distribution equations for actively-coordinated vehicles is presented. The applicable platforms include not only systems with star topologies, such as walking machines that have multiple legs with a single body, but also general tree-structured mechanisms, such as variably-configured wheeled vehicles having multiple modules. Based on this formulation, several standard optimization techniques, such as linear programming or quadratic programming, can be applied to obtain the solution. The efficiency of the formulation is demonstrated with results showing real-time execution on a Pentium PC.