English

Distributed end-effector formation control for mixed fully- and under-actuated manipulators with flexible joints

Systems and Control 2025-07-08 v2 Robotics Systems and Control Optimization and Control

Abstract

The presence of faulty or underactuated manipulators can disrupt the end-effector formation keeping of a team of manipulators. Based on two-link planar manipulators, we investigate this end-effector formation keeping problem for mixed fully- and under-actuated manipulators with flexible joints. In this case, the underactuated manipulators can comprise of active-passive (AP) manipulators, passive-active (PA) manipulators, or a combination thereof. We propose distributed control laws for the different types of manipulators to achieve and maintain the desired formation shape of the end-effectors. It is achieved by assigning virtual springs to the end-effectors for the fully-actuated ones and to the virtual end-effectors for the under-actuated ones. We study further the set of all desired and reachable shapes for the networked manipulators' end-effectors. Finally, we validate our analysis via numerical simulations.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.01101,
  title  = {Distributed end-effector formation control for mixed fully- and under-actuated manipulators with flexible joints},
  author = {Zhiyu Peng and Bayu Jayawardhana and Xin Xin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.01101},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:38:09.668Z