Cooperative Manipulation of an Unknown Payload With Concurrent Mass and Drag Force Estimation

In this letter, we consider a team of robots that cooperatively transport a payload with an unknown mass in the presence of unknown drag forces. We develop a concurrent learning-based adaptive control algorithm that estimates the drag forces and the unknown mass and drives the agents and the payload to a common desired velocity. The algorithm also regulates the contact forces on the payload. We prove that the estimated parameters, including the mass of the payload, converge to their true values. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm using two simulation examples.