Manipulability Ellipsoids of Wheeled Mobile Manipulators

This paper presents the analysis on the manipulability of a wheeled mobile manipulator which consists of a wheeled mobile platform and a manipulator atop. It is assumed that the mobile platform is a deficient system and the manipulator is a nonredundant system, but the mobile manipulators as a whole is a redundant system. First Yoshikawa´s definition of the manipulability ellipsoid for a redundant/nonredundant system is extended to a deficient system. Second, the effects of the nonholonomic constraint of the mobile platform and the location the mobile platform and the manipulator is analyzed.