Integration of Locomotion and Manipulation Control for Articulated Body Mobile Robots

Abstract

The articulated body mobile robot KORYU possess a long snake like body configuration, and as like snakes, it has an intrinsic capability to perform manipulation adding degrees of freedom from its articulated body, and also using the body's locomotion freedom. In this paper, we explore these advantages to configure an augmented manipulator with effective integration of manipulation and steering control for the real mechanical model KR-II. This robot is equipped with a single link manipulator arm on its foremost segment, and thus the range of tasks for the original configuration is extremely limited. Computer simulation and experimental results are shown to demonstrate the validity of the manipulation configurations and the versatility of the proposed system.