Cooperative Robotic Exploration and Transport of Unknown Objects

Most of the approaches addressing cooperative transport consider that robots have prior information about the object. In this work the robot estimates the object's characteristics required for the transportation process. A range sensor is used to map the object and the power applied by the robot/manipulator motor is used to estimate the effort required to transport it via pushing or grasping. With this information the robot can decide how the object will be manipulated and if it will request help from other robots to perform the transportation. We present experimental results to evaluate the framework efficacy and limitations. The framework enable cooperation among the robots to carry out the proposed task.