Implementation of a Heterogeneous Multi-Robot System for a Construction Task

Cooperative robotic systems are becoming increasingly important, as cooperation between two or more robots makes it possible to tackle tasks that are difficult, if not impossible, to perform with a single robot. Among the various cooperative robotic systems, in this paper we focus on a heterogeneous robotic system to perform a building activity where large and heavy blocks are used. The proposed robotic system is based on a lifting mechanism and a robotic arm. This system exploits the characteristics of the lifting cable mechanism to hold most of the weight of the block, while the use of the rigid robot allows to obtain the desired precision during the fine placement. In this paper, we first derive the dynamic model of the system under consideration. Then, the kinematics analysis of the multi-robot system is investigated. Based on these two previous results, a control scheme is designed to ensure safe and correct cooperation between the two robotic systems. Experimental results with an in-scale prototype of the proposed robotic solution show the efficiency of our approach.