Coordinated transportation of a single object by two nonholonomic mobile robots

We propose a decentralized control algorithm for transporting a single object by two nonholonomic mobile robots. One of the robots acts as a leader, whose trajectory is planned by itself or defined previously, whereas the other robot, referred to as a follower, follows the leader by keeping a constant distance from the leader. The follower can also avoid obstacles while following the leader without any absolute information about their position. Furthermore, the two mobile robots can realize an omnidirectional motion of the object when the leader broadcasts some simple information to the follower. Some simulation results show a good performance by the proposed decentralized control algorithm. This work was presented, in part, at the Seventh International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 16–18, 2002.