Trajectory Tracking Control Of Wheeled Mobile Manipulators With Joint Flexibility Via Virtual Decomposition Approach

Wheeled mobile manipulators (WMMs) involving a wheeled mobile platform and a serial manipulator are finding increasing applications in diverse fields, creating new challenges in performing high-precision operations in a spacious workspace. WMMs are challenging to control due to uncertainties in system parameters, coupled dynamics, and external disturbances, which make stability guarantees difficult. This paper proposes a virtual decomposition control (VDC)-based trajectory tracking controller for WMMs, addressing joint flexibility, external disturbances, etc. The proposed method uses a VDC-based iterative approach to manage the complex coupled dynamics and employs a separate adaptive controller to handle joint flexibility. The robotic system’s stability is validated using the specific features of VDC (proof of each subsystem’s virtual stability) according to the Lyapunov stability theory. The advantages and effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated through experiments.