Heterogeneous Full-body Control of a Mobile Manipulator with Behavior Trees

TL;DR

This paper extends a Behavior Tree framework to enable coordinated control of complex mobile manipulators with multiple low-level controllers, facilitating achievement of complex, integrated tasks.

Contribution

It introduces a modular approach for controlling heterogeneous, redundant systems with Behavior Trees, allowing for complex goal achievement through subsystem coordination.

Findings

Successful integration of multiple controllers within a Behavior Tree framework

Demonstrated coordination in complex mobile manipulation tasks

Enhanced modularity and flexibility in system control

Abstract

Integrating the heterogeneous controllers of a complex mechanical system, such as a mobile manipulator, within the same structure and in a modular way is still challenging. In this work we extend our framework based on Behavior Trees for the control of a redundant mechanical system to the problem of commanding more complex systems that involve multiple low-level controllers. This allows the integrated systems to achieve non-trivial goals that require coordination among the sub-systems.