Cooperative Load Transport: A Formation Control Perspective

We consider a group of agents collaboratively transporting a flexible payload. The contact forces between the agents and the payload are modeled as gradients of nonlinear potentials that describe the deformations of the payload. The load-transport problem is then treated in a similar fashion to the formation-control problem. Decentralized control laws are developed such that without explicit communication, the agents and the payload converge to the same constant velocity; meanwhile, the contact forces are regulated. Experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of our designs.