Multirobot Object Transport via Robust Caging

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a control algorithm to collectively transport an object using a group of relatively low-cost robots. We address this problem using the robust caging, which features reliable object closure with minimum number of robots, and requires no high-precision control capability on the individual robot. Given a 2-D convex object, the proposed method uses the quality of complete robustness to first optimize the number of robots in the initial formation, and then reorient and move the formation. The method is free of force analysis, and therefore less prone to sensor errors and failures. Compared with state-of-the-art multirobot object transport approaches, which require more robots and rely heavily on high-precision control, such as force and torque feedback control, our method uses fewer robots and has high tolerance to control noises. We performed both simulation and real-time experiments to demonstrate the performance of our method. We conclude that the proposed robust caging is promising under reduced number of robots and a certain level of control noises in multirobot object transport tasks.