A Minimum-Energy Control Approach for Redundant Mobile Manipulators in Physical Human-Robot Interaction Applications

2026-03-26

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenges of high energy consumption and control complexity in redundant mobile manipulators during human–robot interaction, which arise from kinematic redundancy. The authors propose a whole-system minimum kinetic energy control strategy, introducing—for the first time—the minimization of total system kinetic energy as an explicit objective in the interactive control of mobile manipulators. By integrating whole-body dynamic modeling with redundancy resolution, the method simultaneously maintains real-time task performance—such as peg-in-hole insertion—and enhances energy efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly reduces overall system kinetic energy compared to existing benchmark control strategies, achieving superior performance in both task accuracy and energy efficiency.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Replanning and Plan Repair
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

Research on mobile manipulation systems that physically interact with humans has expanded rapidly in recent years, opening the way to tasks which could not be performed using fixed-base manipulators. Within this context, developing suitable control methodologies is essential since mobile manipulators introduce additional degrees of freedom, making the design of control approaches more challenging and more prone to performance optimization. This paper proposes a control approach for a mobile manipulator, composed of a mobile base equipped with a robotic arm mounted on the top, with the objective of minimizing the overall kinetic energy stored in the whole-body mobile manipulator in physical human-robot interaction applications. The approach is experimentally tested with reference to a peg-in-hole task, and the results demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces the overall kinetic energy stored in the whole-body robotic system and improves the system performance compared with the benchmark method.

Problem

• mobile manipulators
• physical human-robot interaction
• redundant systems
• minimum-energy control
• kinetic energy minimization

Innovation

• minimum-energy control
• mobile manipulator
• physical human-robot interaction
• kinetic energy minimization
• redundant robotics