Modeling and Kinematic Control of Heterogeneous Mobile Manipulators for Cooperative Tasks: A Pose–Shape Approach

This article presents a modeling and cooperative kinematic control framework for heterogeneous mobile manipulators operating in a shared task space. The proposed approach integrates systems with different kinematic structures into a unified pose–shape representation, derived from individual and cooperative Jacobian models, enabling coordinated motion under a common formulation and extendable to multiple robots through a hierarchical architecture. The control strategy exploits system redundancy via null-space projection to incorporate secondary objectives without affecting the primary task. In particular, collision-free obstacle avoidance of the mobile bases and safe joint configuration of the robotic arms are achieved simultaneously while preserving formation tracking. The stability of the cooperative system is established using Lyapunov theory, ensuring asymptotic convergence of tracking errors. The proposed method is validated through numerical simulations in MATLAB under two representative scenarios, demonstrating its capability to handle heterogeneous configurations, maintain coordination, and execute safe and scalable cooperative behaviors.