Distributed Cooperative Manipulation under Timed Temporal Specifications
This addresses the challenge of coordinating robotic agents for precise object manipulation in applications like manufacturing or logistics, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing automata-based methodologies.
The paper tackles the problem of cooperative manipulation of a single object by multiple robotic agents under local goal specifications expressed as Metric Interval Temporal Logic formulas, proposing a distributed model-free control protocol that eliminates the need for feedback of contact forces/torques or inter-agent communication, with simulation studies verifying its validity.
This paper addresses the problem of cooperative manipulation of a single object by N robotic agents under local goal specifications given as Metric Interval Temporal Logic (MITL) formulas. In particular, we propose a distributed model-free control protocol for the trajectory tracking of the cooperatively manipulated object without necessitating feedback of the contact forces/torques or inter-agent communication. This allows us to abstract the motion of the coupled object-agents system as a finite transition system and, by employing standard automata-based methodologies, we derive a hybrid control algorithm for the satisfaction of a given MITL formula. In addition, we use load sharing coefficients to represent potential differences in power capabilities among the agents. Finally, simulation studies verify the validity of the proposed scheme.