Motion planning for multi-mobile-manipulator payload transport systems

In this paper, a kinematic motion planning algorithm for cooperative spatial payload manipulation is presented. A hierarchical approach is introduced to compute realtime collision-free motion plans for a formation of mobile manipulator robots. Initially, collision-free configurations of a deformable 2-D virtual bounding box are identified, over a planning horizon, to determine a convex workspace for the entire system. Then, 3-D payload configurations whose projections lie within the convex workspace are computed. Finally, a convex decentralized model-predictive controller is formulated to plan collision-free trajectories for the formation of mobile manipulators. Our work facilitates real-time motion planning for the system and is scalable in the number of robots. The algorithm is validated in simulated dynamic environments.