In manufacturing processes such as assembly of mechanical components, gripping, fixturing and part feeding, there are situations in which normally rigid objects are subject to multiple frictional contacts with other objects. Since the mechanical system is characterized by unilateral, frictional constraints, the system is subject to collisions with impacts and the topology of the system varies with time. This research focuses on the study of frictional impacts, the development of an engineering design tool to evaluate designs of mechanical components and analyze the behavior of such systems, and the control of frictional contact interactions. The main goal is to develop, implement and demonstrate tools for coordination of multiple, heterogeneous robots, and for the robust machine perception and control of tactical unmanned systems for urban environments. We have developed an omnidirectional sensor and the necessary image analysis algorithms that allow us to track such specified features as horizontal or vertical lines and perform such tasks as climb stairs with supervised autonomy.
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We are developing the framework and the control algorithms for collaborative mobile manipulation . This work is in collaboration with Tom Sugar . We are developing the software framework for controlling a coordinating multiple autonomous robots. More information is available here .