RI: Small: Dynamic Payload Transport and Manipulation by Teams of Cooperating Mobile Robotic-Cranes

我们试图通过半自主移动机器人起重机模块团队来研究协作有效载荷运输和操作的系统设计和动态控制。所提出的研究的学术价值在于它对各种约束下一般机械系统的设计和控制理论的发展做出了贡献。首先，所考虑的合作系统需要单向控制输入。其次，本文的研究还将有助于物理约束下多个非完整系统的基本设计和控制理论。最终，这项拟议的研究还提供了对必须在复杂、动态和非结构化环境中运行的联网机器人系统的基本理解。在广泛的多智能体系统文献中，处理物理相互作用和物理能量流的工作仍然相对较少，我们试图记住这些工作。这项研究的更广泛影响是在应用领域，如合作有效载荷运输、在事故现场协助第一反应人员的技术、搜索和救援应用，以及许多类型的远程科学研究，如在海底环境、热带雨林环境或北极环境中进行的实验。远程建筑、危险环境的远程清理、地雷搜索和远程停用，只是可能受到半自动人/机器人交互影响的众多应用中的一小部分。此外，该项目还将开发课程、工具和人力资源基础，以构思、调查、实施和验证这类系统。除研究生和本科生培训外，计划中的教育举措包括：(1)开发一门新的机器人技术研究生课程并将其纳入课程；(2)创建教育技术课程单元，用于概括和传播知识；(3)在大学内与当地高中和工业界以及整个教育界进行外联。

We seek to investigate the systematic design and dynamic-control of cooperative payload transport and manipulation by teams of semi-autonomous mobile robotic-crane modules. The Intellectual Merit of the proposed research lies in its contribution to the development of design and control theory for general mechanical systems under various restrictions. First, the cooperative systems under consideration require unidirectional control inputs. Second, the proposed research will also contribute to the fundamental design and control theory for multiple nonholonomic systems under physical constraints. Ultimately, the proposed research also provides fundamental understanding of networked robotic systems that must operate in complex, dynamic, and unstructured environments. There is still relatively little work that treats the physical-interactions and physical power-flows within the broad multi-agent-systems literature, which we seek to remedy.The Broader Impacts of this research are in application areas such as cooperative payload transport, technologies to assist first responders at accident scenes, search and rescue applications, and remote scientific studies of many kinds, such as experiments conducted in undersea environments, rain forest environments, or arctic environments. Remote construction, remote cleanup of hazardous environments, land mine search and remote deactivation, are just a few of the numerous applications that may be impacted by semi-autonomous human/robot interaction. In adition, this project will develop courses, tools and the human resource base to conceive, investigate, implement and validate such systems-of-systems. In addition to graduate and undergraduate student training, planned educational initiatives include: (i) developing and integrating a new graduate course in robotics into the curriculum; (ii) creating educational technology curricular modules for encapsulating knowledge and for dissemination, and (iii) outreach within the university, with local high schools and industry and the educational community at large.