** Updated experiments with more details can be found at • Human-multirobot colla... and a paper describing the system can be found at arxiv.org/abs/2206.14293 **
The Omnid mobile manipulators are an experimental platform for testing control architectures for (1) autonomous multirobot cooperative manipulation and (2) human-collaborative multirobot manipulation. This video demonstrates human-collaborative manipulation. Three Omnids bear the weight of a large, awkward, 15 kg pipe assembly, and they create a "float" behavior, so the load can be positioned and oriented in six dimensions (x, y, z, roll, pitch, yaw) intuitively and with little effort by the human operator.
The Omnids are mobile collaborative robots (mobile "cobots," or "mocobots" for short).
The Omnids' distributed control allows any number of robots to participate in the manipulation. For larger loads, more identical robots may join the task. A single large robot is not required. The distributed manipulators also apply distributed forces to the load, which is particularly useful for fragile or flexible loads.
Each Omnid consists of a 3-dof mecanum-wheel omnidirectional mobile base, a 3-dof series-elastic delta-type manipulator, and a 3-dof passive gimbal. The passive compliance of the series-elastic actuators, the passive gimbals, and the distributed control laws ensure the safety of the human operator and fragile loads. The series-elastic manipulators also allow precise force control on the load during assembly tasks.
The Omnid mobile manipulator is a model for a broad class of collaborative mobile manipulators, where joints of the individual robots may be stiff (effectively motion-controlled, like the heavily-geared motors of the mecanum wheels), elastic, or unactuated. Other examples of mobile manipulators within this class include humanoid robots, industrial robot arms mounted on wheeled mobile bases, gantry robots, and even aerial manipulators.
Music: "Hello World!" by Daniel Lynch
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Northwestern Center for Robotics and Biosystems: robotics.northwestern.edu/