A New Approach to Manipulate Objects with a Team of Distributed Robots Based on Constrain-and-Move Strategy

Based on constrain and move concept, a new algorithm CCM (complex Constrain and Move) is proposed to reorient objects with a distributed object handling mobile robots. In traditional constrain and move strategy, a group of robots constrain the object in undesirable directions and another group push the object to move it in desired path. In proposed CCM method, each robot does both constrain task and move task and the algorithm of robots are the same. A series of dynamic computer simulations are conducted to measure the efficiency of the new proposed algorithm for different experiments. The results of the simulations indicate that the system is stable in all experiments and it is more faults tolerant. Simulations also revealed that the minimum necessary numbers of robots in this method to handle the object is less than traditional constrain and move strategy. Introduction. A strong, complicated and expensive robot is needed to manipulate a heavy, big object. Such a robot usually depends on the shape of the object. The cooperation of some simple and cheap robots is a suitable way to manipulate objects with various shapes. Differen