Cooperative control of a two-manipulator system handling a general flexible object

Abstract

Robotic manipulation of a general flexible object is an extremely difficult and challenging control problem. This paper shows that under a simple PD position feedback, the position/orientation of a general flexible object handled by two manipulators is able to approach the desired one and at the same time the vibration of each contact is suppressed. We use the "clamped-free" model to decompose the motion of the object into two components, a rigid and a flexible one, which allows us to treat them separately and achieve desired motions with a simple PD scheme. This is proved to work theoretically.