A Review on Cooperative Robotic Arms with Mobile or Drones Bases

This review paper focuses on cooperative robotic arms with mobile or drone bases performing cooperative tasks. This is because cooperative robots are often used as risk-reduction tools to human life. For example, they are used to explore dangerous places such as minefields and disarm explosives. Drones can be used to perform tasks such as aerial photography, military and defense missions, agricultural surveys, etc. The bases of the cooperative robotic arms can be stationary, mobile (ground), or drones. Cooperative manipulators allow faster performance of assigned tasks because of the available “extra hand”. Furthermore, a mobile base increases the reachable ground workspace of cooperative manipulators while a drone base drastically increases this workspace to include the aerial space. The papers in this review are chosen to extensively cover a wide variety of cooperative manipulation tasks and industries that use them. In cooperative manipulation, avoiding self-collision is one of the most important tasks to be performed. In addition, path planning and formation control can be challenging because of the increased number of components to be coordinated.