Decentralized Adaptive Sliding Mode Control for Collective Manipulation in Multi-robot Systems

This paper presents a fully decentralized adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) strategy for collective manipulation of an unknown rigid body using multiple robots. The control law is independent of the rigid body properties and the number of robots manipulating the rigid body. It does not require communication between the robots and is robust toward the model uncertainties and bounded disturbances. It is assumed that each robot knows its position with respect to the center of mass of the rigid body. The proposed controller is designed using a Lyapunov-based approach and has proven convergence and stability. The control law is validated through MATLAB simulations.