Potential Field Control of a Redundant Nonholonomic Mobile Manipulator with Corridor-Constrained Base Motion

Abstract

This work proposes a solution for redundant nonholonomic mobile manipulator control with corridor constraints on base motion. The proposed control strategy applies an artificial potential field for base navigation to achieve joint control with desired trajectory tracking of the end effector. The overall kinematic model is created by describing the nonholonomic mobile platform and the kinematics of the manipulator. The objective function used consists of a primary control task that optimizes the joint variables to achieve the desired pose or trajectory of the end effector and a secondary control task that optimizes the joint variables for the base to support the arm and stay within the corridor. As a last priority, an additional optimization is introduced to optimize the maneuverability index. The proposed baseline navigation has global convergence without local minima and is computationally efficient. This is achieved by an optimal grid-based search on a coarse discrete grid and a bilinear interpolation to obtain a continuous potential function and its gradient. The performance of the proposed control algorithm is illustrated by several simulations of a mobile manipulator model derived for a Pal Tiago mobile base and an Emiko Franka Panda robotic manipulator.