Sensor-referenced multiple robot cooperation for material handling

Abstract

In this paper, a new cooperation control scheme for multiple robot material handling is presented. First, the event-based planning and control method is introduced, which lays down the foundation for sensor-referenced cooperation of multiple robot systems. The key step is the development of event-based action reference. Based on the real-time sensory information, the event-based action reference drives the system to achieve the best possible coordination. The event-based cooperation control scheme can easily be implemented in a distributed computer system. A real-time control and computing architecture is proposed to implement this scheme in a parallel computation. The new multiple robot cooperation scheme has been experimentally implemented and tested on two 6-DOF PUMA 560 robots. The experimental results have demonstrated the advantages of the scheme.