This research focuses on two tasks, completely decentralized control of cooperating multiple robots sharing the same workload, and control of robots in space. Typically for cooperating robots, each robot is controlled by its own control module in a parallel manner. However, there is a real time communication channel, comprising a common bus structure, between modules to enable coordination between control modules. For this configuration, the robots are said to be centralized. Unfortunately, for some conditions, i.e., when the robots are made by different manufacturers or when the controllers are located far apart, providing a common bus is not possible. It then becomes necessary to completely decentralize the control scheme, that is , have them operate independently of each other. This project investigates a method for achieving that goal. The conjecture is that each robot can accurately estimate the action of the other by sensing the motion of the object being handled, and by sensing the interaction force between itself and the object. This hypothesis will be tested as the first task in this project. In the second task, the intent is to deal with the problem associated with the dynamics effects associated with interaction between a robot and the space system which it is in contact with. The research goal is to devise a scheme whereby both the robot and space system remain stationary in the large during interactions between the two.
