Several advanced control laws are available for
complex robotic systems such as humanoid robots and mobile
manipulators. Controls are usually developed for locomotion or
for manipulation purposes. Resulting motions are usually exe-
cuted sequentially and the potentiality of the robotic platform
is not fully exploited.
In this work we consider the problem of loco–manipulation
planning for a robot with given parametrized control laws
known as primitives. Such primitives, may have not been
designed to be executed simultaneously and by composing
them instability may easily arise. With the proposed approach,
primitives combination that guarantee stability of the system
are obtained resulting in complex whole–body behavior.
A formal definition of motion primitives is provided and a
random sampling approach on a manifold with limited dimen-
sion is investigated. Probabilistic completeness and asymptotic
optimality are also proved. The proposed approach is tested
both on a mobile manipulator and on the humanoid robot
Walk-Man, performing loco–manipulation tasks.
Humanoids 2016 - under press
