A General Approach to the Dynamics of Nonholonomic Mobile Manipulator Systems

Abstract

This paper studies the dynamic modeling of a nonholonomic mobile manipulator that consists of a multi-degree of freedom serial manipulator and an autonomous wheeled mobile platform. The manipulator is rigidly mounted on the mobile platform, and the wheeled mobile platform moves on the ground subjected to nonholonomic constraints. Forward Recursive Formulation for the dynamics of multibody systems is employed to obtain the governing equation of the mobile manipulator system. The approach fully utilizes the existing equations of motion of the manipulator and that of the mobile platform. Furthermore, terms representing the dynamic interactions between the manipulator and the mobile platform can be observed. The resulting dynamic equation of the mobile manipulator has the minimum number of generalized coordinates and can be used for the purpose of dynamic simulation and control design, etc. The implementation issues of the model are discussed.