Interactive Manipulation of Mobile Manipulators

Dear Colleagues,

We cordially invite you to submit your work to this Special Issue (SI) on “Interactive Manipulation of Mobile Manipulator”. In this SI, we would like to bring together AI and robotics researchers and discuss the scientific foundations, applications, and analysis of mobile manipulator systems.

Originally, mobility and manipulation were two different research branches in the intelligent robots field. For mobility, researchers are interested in how to intelligently and safely move a mobile robot to the desired place even in unseen and unstructured environments. For manipulation, different types of fixed installation manipulators are studied to control external objects, e.g., pick-and-place, grasping, or in-hand/bi-manual manipulation. However, recent robotic applications require more advanced mobile manipulation skills. In some scenarios, robot work with humans in order to perform a task more efficiently.

Promising results have already been achieved in mobile manipulation. In terms of hardware, many new types of mobile robots are available. These include traditional wheel and biped or quadruped robots. Additionally, hybrid wheel and feet robots have been developed in recent years. This can help robot move over dynamic and variant terrains. Many types of collaborative robots have been integrated with mobile robots. In terms of software, innovative coordination technologies between the mobile base and manipulator are studied either via model-based or data-driven approaches. With rich sensor resources, robots can compute the environment model in an interactive way and safely work with human together. From the application perspective, many mobile manipulators are employed in space, ocean, and industrial environments.

We invite experts from different domains to share and report findings on mobile manipulation and discuss its real-life application.

Prof. Dr. Qiang Li
Dr. Huibin Cao
Dr. Xiang Dong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Machines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• new sensors and mobile robot design and evaluation
• model, planning, and control of mobile manipulator
• loco-manipulation
• active or interactive perception in mobile manipulation
• shared autonomy for mobile manipulation
• human–robot collaboration
• applications in service, industrial, agriculture, space, medical and underwater domains