Cooperative payload transport

A research team led by Venkat N. Krovi, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and director of the Automation Robotics and Mechatronics (ARM) Laboratory, is applying lessons about cooperation in biological collectives (e.g., armies of ants) to models of automated systems. In one project, Krovi’s team is creating a framework for payload transport by a fleet of semi-autonomous wheeled mobile modules. The modules are combined to create a flexible variable-topology composite system and can be controlled as a collective and reconfigured as needed to enhance performance.

In recent work, Krovi and his students investigated the development and implementation of two variants of kinematic cooperation—leader-follower and decentralized—in a system of wheeled mobile manipulators. They tested the framework for optimal configuration of the articulations to maximize manipulability of the payload. In a parallel effort, they examined the development of decentralized motion planning within a geometric framework to determine the best formation for given tasks. Another student examined the creation of distributed dynamic simulations for multi-body systems with multiple closed kinematic loops. The work employed novel recursive forward and inverse dynamics algorithms for parallel architecture systems based on the decoupled natural-orthogonal complement.

The remotely controlled frameworks created by the ARM Lab have numerous applications. In particular, their unique non-odometric dead-reckoning accuracy and active-reconfigurability has reinvigorated interest in distributed physical collaboration between systems of systems. The emergent applications, civilian and military, range from material handling on the shop floor to terrestrial and extraterrestrial uneven terrain locomotion. Principal funding comes from Krovi's National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Many aspects of the research are conducted in cooperation with the New York State Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation.