Design of cooperative mobile robots for co-manipulation and transportation tasks

This paper presents a design methodology for creating cooperative robots capable to manipulate and transport payloads. The strategy is based on tightening a payload between a set of mobile robots called m-bots. A lifting mechanism with two degrees of freedom mounted on each mobile robot allows then to lift the payload and put it on each m-bot top platform to be transported. Structural and dimensional analysis are detailed in order to develop the proposed mechanism. 3D multi-body dynamic software simulation results using different actuation for the lifting mechanism are presented. Experiments based on a developed test-bench and manufactured prototypes allow to validate the lifting process of the payload.