Mobile manipulator performance measurement towards manufacturing assembly tasks

Abstract

Mobile manipulator performance measurement research is relatively minimal as compared to that of robot arms. Measurement methods, such as optical tracking systems, are useful for measuring the performance of mobile manipulators, although at a much higher relative cost as compared to artifacts. The concept of using test artifacts demonstrates to potential manufacturers and users of mobile manipulator systems that relatively low cost performance measurement methods exist. This paper discusses the concept of reconfigurable mobile manipulator artifacts that were designed and built. An artifact was then used through experimentation to measure the performance of a mobile manipulator to demonstrate the feasibility of the test method. Experimental results show a promising test method to measure the performance of mobile manipulators that are to be used for manufacturing assembly tasks, where at least the mobile manipulator tested has the capability to perform assembly to 1 mm positional accuracy or greater. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016.