Singularity avoidance control of a non-holonomic mobile manipulator for intuitive hand guidance

Abstract

Mobile manipulators are robot systems capable of combining logistics and manipulation tasks. They thus fulfill an important prerequisite for the integration into flexible manufacturing systems. Another essential feature required for modern production facilities is a user-friendly and intuitive human-machine interaction. In this work the goal of code-less programming is addressed and an intuitive and safe approach to physically interact with such robot systems is derived. We present a natural approach for hand guiding a sensitive mobile manipulator in task space using a force torque sensor that is mount close to the end effector. The proposed control structure is capable of handling the kinematic redundancies of the system and avoid singular arm configurations by means of haptic feedback to the user. A detailed analysis of all possible singularities of the UR robot family is given and the functionality of the controller design is shown with laboratory experiments on our mobile manipulator.