Pose Selection of a Mobile Manipulator for a Pick and Place Task

Abstract

A mobile manipulator is a system with a robotic manipulator mounted on top of a mobile base. It has both indoor and outdoor applications for transporting or transferring materials. When a user gives commands, they are usually at high levels such as "move the object to the table," or "tidy the room." By intelligently decomposing these complex commands into several subtasks, the mobile manipulator can perform the tasks with a greater efficiency. One of the crucial subtasks for these commands is the pick-and-place task. For the mobile manipulator, selection of a good base position and orientation is essential to accomplishing this task. This paper presents an algorithm that determines one of the position and orientation of a mobile manipulator in order to complete the pickand-place task without human intervention. Its effectiveness are shown for a mobile manipulator with 9 degrees-of-freedom in simulations