This paper describes a methodology to carry a palletized object by coordination of multiple AGVs (automated guided vehicles in factory). To handle the object freely by vehicles under non-holonomic cnstraints, each vehicle is connected with a pallet by a two-degrees-of-freeom attachment that consists of an active prismatic joint and a free rotary joint. A centralized control algorithm is presented to precisely carry a large and heavy object at high speed along a commanded arbitrary path. One of the vehicles, referred to as a leader, provides the other vehicles only with the information on the object's desired behavior. Each vehicle controls the force applied to the object. A disturbance observer based actuator controller is proposed to produce the force accurately by the vehicle with a complex dynamic structure. The simulation results illustrate the validity of our methodology.
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