A resolved acceleration control (RAC) and proportional-integral active force
control (PIAFC) is proposed as an approach for the robust motion control of a
mobile manipulator (MM) comprising a differentially driven wheeled mobile
platform with a two-link planar arm mounted on top of the platform. The study
emphasizes on the integrated kinematic and dynamic control strategy in which
the RAC is used to manipulate the kinematic component while the PIAFC is
implemented to compensate the dynamic effects including the bounded
known/unknown disturbances and uncertainties. The effectivenss and robustness
of the proposed scheme are investigated through a rigorous simulation study and
later complemented with experimental results obtained through a number of
experiments performed on a fully developed working prototype in a laboratory
environment. A number of disturbances in the form of vibratory and impact
forces are deliberately introduced into the system to evaluate the system
performances. The investigation clearly demonstrates the extreme robustness
feature of the proposed control scheme compared to other systems considered in
the study
