Development of an omnidirectional cooperative transportation system using two mobile robots with two independently driven wheels

In recent years, with the increase in physical distribution volume, unmanned transportation robots are expected as an alternative means of transporting baggage in factories and warehouses. The development of a control system for cooperative transportation by multiple robots is important when the objects to be transported are long and exceed the size and the weight limit. From this, we develop a control system for cooperative transportation using two robots independently driven by two wheels. In this paper, a communication system between two mobile robots and a host PC is constructed by using ROS, and a sub-goal is generated to each robot to realize a cooperative running with two robots. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through an experiment that the controlled point of an object is subject to a movement along the square of 1 m.