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Determination of the base position and working area for mobile manipulators

Shunan Ren (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)
Xiangdong Yang (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)
Jing Xu (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)
Guolei Wang (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)
Ying Xie (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)
Ken Chen (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China)

Assembly Automation

ISSN: 0144-5154

Article publication date: 1 February 2016

365

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine the base position and the largest working area for mobile manipulators. The base position determines the workspace of the mobile manipulator, particularly when the operation mode is intermittent (i.e. the mobile platform stops when the manipulator conducts the task). When the base of the manipulator is in the intersection area of the Base’s Workable Location Spaces (BWLSes), the end effector (EE) can reach all path points. In this study, the intersection line of BWLSes is calculated numerically, and the largest working area is determined using the BWLS concept. The performance of this method is validated with simulations on specific surface segments, such as plane, cylinder and conical surface segments.

Design/methodology/approach

The BWLS is used to determine the largest working area and the base position in which the mobile manipulator can reach all path points with the objective of reducing off-line planning time.

Findings

Without considering the orientation of the EE, the base position and the working area for the mobile manipulator are determined using the BWLS. Compared to other methods, the proposed algorithm is beneficial when the planning problem has six dimensions, ensuring the reachability and stability of the EE.

Originality/value

The algorithm needs no manual configuration, and its performance is investigated for typical surfaces in practical applications.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, under Grant 61403226, and the State Key Laboratory of Tribology, under Grant SKLT09A03.

Citation

Ren, S., Yang, X., Xu, J., Wang, G., Xie, Y. and Chen, K. (2016), "Determination of the base position and working area for mobile manipulators", Assembly Automation, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 80-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-11-2015-101

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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