A Hybrid Control Architecture for Mobile Manipulation

In this article we present a scheme for mobile manipulation by introducing a Mobile Manipulation Control Architecture (MMCA). This architecture is motivated by a need for a systematic control structure for robotic manipulation within a behavior based framework. The control structure enables integration of the manipulator into a behavior based control structure for the platform. Furthermore, our suggested MMCA is designed in such a way that it supports design and performance analysis from both a manipulator dynamics and a hybrid automata perspective. 1 Introduction In many autonomous robot applications the ability to perform mobile manipulation is of key importance. These applications range from robots in space or under water to construction and service robotics. This last category is the motivating application for this work and we believe that there is much to gain in terms of performance if an intelligent service agent is not restricted to manipulating its environment statically, wit..