HEBC: active perception-guided hand–eye–body coordination for mobile manipulation in modular manufacturing

Purpose This paper aims to develop a hand–eye–body coordination (HEBC) framework for mobile manipulation in modular manufacturing, addressing the coupling of workspace perception, task planning, target visibility and whole-body motion. Design/methodology/approach The proposed HEBC framework integrates active workspace exploration, manipulability-informed task and base-pose planning and visibility-constrained whole-body quadratic programming. Environmental information is used to generate task candidates and feasible base poses, while the controller jointly optimizes the redundant manipulator and nonholonomic mobile base subject to tracking, field-of-view, obstacle–separation and actuator constraints. Findings Simulation and hardware experiments show that HEBC improves exploration efficiency and execution performance while maintaining high map coverage and reliable task completion under multiple physical and perceptual constraints. Originality/value This paper’s contribution lies primarily in the system-level integration of active perception, manipulation-aware planning and visibility-constrained whole-body control within a closed-loop perception–planning–execution architecture, rather than in the individual constituent techniques.