Cooperative Dual-Arm Control for Heavy Object Manipulation Based on Hierarchical Quadratic Programming

This paper presents a new control scheme for cooperative dual-arm robots manipulating heavy objects. The proposed method uses the full dynamical model of the kinematically coupled robot system and builds on a hierarchical quadratic programming (HQP) formulation to enforce dynamical inequality constraints such as joint torques or internal loads. This ensures optimal tracking of an object trajectory, while additional objectives with lower priority are optimized on the prior solution space. Therefore, the redundancy of the inherent load distribution problem between the two arms can be eliminated. With this approach, higher object loads can be manipulated compared to non-optimized methods. Simulations with a 14 degree of freedom (dof) dual-arm robotic system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method. The real-time feasibility is guaranteed with an average computation time of less than 0.35 milliseconds at a control rate of 1 kilohertz.