Safe Consensus of Cooperative Manipulation with Hierarchical Event-Triggered Control Barrier Functions

2026-03-06

AI Summary

This work addresses the dual challenges of coordination accuracy and safety constraints in multi-arm cooperative manipulation of heavy or large objects within dynamic environments characterized by limited communication bandwidth and computational resources. The authors propose a distributed control framework that integrates a consensus protocol based on local neighborhood information, a three-layer hierarchical event-triggered control barrier function (CBF) architecture, a risk-aware leader election mechanism, and a smooth switching strategy. The approach ensures translational and rotational consistency in task space while significantly reducing online computational load and communication frequency, all without compromising rigorous safety guarantees. Experimental validation on a dual-Franka robotic platform and multi-arm simulation systems demonstrates the method’s high-precision coordination performance and computational efficiency.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Multiagent Systems: Coordination and Collaboration
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Cooperative transport and manipulation of heavy or bulky payloads by multiple manipulators requires coordinated formation tracking, while simultaneously enforcing strict safety constraints in varying environments with limited communication and real-time computation budgets. This paper presents a distributed control framework that achieves consensus coordination with safety guarantees via hierarchical event-triggered control barrier functions (CBFs). We first develop a consensus-based protocol that relies solely on local neighbor information to enforce both translational and rotational consistency in task space. Building on this coordination layer, we propose a three-level hierarchical event-triggered safety architecture with CBFs, which is integrated with a risk-aware leader selection and smooth switching strategy to reduce online computation. The proposed approach is validated through real-world hardware experiments using two Franka manipulators operating with static obstacles, as well as comprehensive simulations demonstrating scalable multi-arm cooperation with dynamic obstacles. Results demonstrate higher precision cooperation under strict safety constraints, achieving substantially reduced computational cost and communication frequency compared to baseline methods.

Problem

• cooperative manipulation
• safety constraints
• consensus coordination
• limited communication
• real-time computation

Innovation

• hierarchical event-triggered control
• control barrier functions
• cooperative manipulation
• consensus coordination
• risk-aware leader selection