Position control of two‐arm manipulators for coordinated point‐to‐point motion

Abstract

AbstractA trajectory planning and motion control algorithm is; presented for the point‐to‐point (PTP) motion of two‐arm manipulators cooperating on a task. The proposed method considers the multi‐arm manipulator as a system when formulating its kinematic model and obtains a global solution to the system, as opposed to individual arm solutions. For PTP motion control between two arm configurations, a simple trajectory is first assumed by defining joint velocity profiles and maximum allowable task space errors between the two end effectors of the manipulator. The task space errors during the motion are then continuously monitored to take corrective action when necessary to prevent those errors from exceeding the given tolerance limits. The main objective of this method is to reduce the number of inverse kinematics solutions during the real‐time control of the two‐arm system. The algorithm is illustrated by a numerical example for an eight degree‐of‐freedom kinematically redundant planar two‐arm system.