Behavioral Formation Control of Multiple Mecanum-wheeled Mobile Manipulators

In this paper, a behavioral control strategy is developed to control multiple unmanned ground vehicle-manipulator (UGVM) systems to achieve some desired formations, in which each agent is composed of a Mecanum-wheeled mobile robot equipped with a robotic manipulator. The goal is to ensure vehicle-manipulator coordination and manage multiple missions simultaneously. The coordination between the vehicle motion and the arm operation is handled by the proposed cooperative motion controller. The elementary behaviors for each autonomous agent are carefully defined and properly arranged in priority aiming at achieving the global intergraded behavior. A mission supervisor is in charge of switching between the compound missions according to the mission needs and the feedback of sensors. A simulation example with four UGVMs demonstrates the effectiveness of the algorithm.