Four-Arm Collaboration: Two Dual-Arm Robots Work Together to Manipulate Tethered Tools

This article presents a planner for a master dual-arm robot to manipulate tethered tools with the help of an assistant dual-arm robot. The assistant robot assists the master robot by manipulating the tool cable and avoiding collisions. The provided assistance allows the master robot to perform tool placements on the robot workspace table and regrasp it, which would typically fail since cable tension may change the tool positions. It also allows the master robot to perform tool handovers, which would normally cause entanglements or collisions with the cable and the environment without assistance. Simulations and real-world experiments are performed to validate the proposed planner. Experimental results show that with the help of the assistant dual-arm robot and the proposed method, the master robot obtained improved flexibility in working with tethered tools.