Cooperative Transportation by Mutual Handling of Two Autonomous Mobile Robots

Abstract

A new type of cooperation called mutual handling is introduced in this paper, which enables a multi-robot system to achieve an advanced functionality that cannot be realized by a single robot, and as an application of mutual handling, a method of cooperative transportation for two autonomous mobile robots to climb over a large step by operating each forklifts cooperatively is proposed, which cannot be overcome by a single robot. Then, a forklift mechanism for mutual handling is designed, and two autonomous mobile robots equipped with the forklifts are developed. Finally, a cooperative transportation method in which two autonomous mobile robots are controlled based on communication is presented, and the step-climbing motion by cooperative transportation is proved feasible by showing the experimental results using the developed omni-directional mobile robots.