Control of two wheel mobile manipulator on a rough terrain using reaction torque observer feedback

Abstract

The mobile manipulator has the potential to become an efficient industrial robot due to its mobility and dexterity. Moreover, it has expanded the operational area of the mobile manipulator due to its ability to work in a limited space. However, adaptability to unknown environments has still not been developed to date. Therefore, adaptation of the mobile manipulator for unknown environments especially for rough/irregular terrain is discussed in this paper. Information about the environment, a key factor when aiming for compliance with an unknown and/or unstructured environment, was collected using a reaction torque observer. In order to adapt to the environment, compliance control was applied to the mobile manipulator. In this paper, we present a novel control strategy we have developed that can deal with unknown environments through the effective use of inverted pendulum control. Simulation and experiments were carried out to ensure the validity of the proposed method. The method could be confirmed as effective according to the results obtained.