SUBMITTED TO THE IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS AS A SHORT PAPER 1 Mobile Manipulation of Flexible Objects Under Deformation Constraints

Abstract — We develop a velocity field tracking control scheme with PI force feedback to transport and manipulate deformable material with a mobile manipulator. We assume that the deformable object is a damped underactuated mechanical system. The input-to-state stability properties of its zero dynamics are used to derive bounds on the admissible end-effector velocities and accelerations. It is shown both analytically and in simulation, that using deformation feedback we can avoid exciting excessive object deformations