This project will investigate how mobile manipulators can operate and interact in natural environments like rainforests, grassland, shrubland, farmland, or desert ecosystems. This research project would explore how to control a continuous track or quadruped mobile manipulator in outdoor natural environments with many obstacles and constraints.
- Is holistic mobile manipulation possible with uneven terrain? As a mobile robot traverses rough ground, the terrain difference will cause feedback in the end-effector position.
- The mobile manipulator must overcome obstacle challenges, i.e. traverse around a log/stump/shrub to manipulate the point of interest. How do we incorporate this capability in a reactive closed-loop motion controller?