Performance assessment of a decentralized controller for cooperative manipulators; numerical and experimental study

There are two possible methods for controlling the manipulators that cooperate in carrying an object: using a single central controller for the whole set and using decentralized controllers for each manipulator. Using the first method requires a perfect knowledge of the whole system's dynamics and the carried object. Due to implementation problems, among them the uncertainty about the manipulated object's mass, using this method is impractical. This makes using the second method inevitable. In this method, manipulators are controlled separately and they are unaware of each other's condition. The effect of each manipulator on the other one is like a disturbance. In this paper, the performance of second method is analyzed by numerical methods. For confirming the results experimentally, this method has been implemented on an experimental setup. The results indicate the desirable performance of this method.