  There are various trajectory planners for mobile manipulators. It is often
challenging to compare their performance under similar circumstances due to
differences in hardware, dissimilarity of tasks and objectives, as well as
uncertainties in measurements and operating environments. In this paper, we
propose a simulation framework to evaluate the performance of the local
trajectory planners to generate smooth, and dynamically and kinematically
feasible trajectories for mobile manipulators in the same environment. We focus
on local planners as they are key components that provide smooth trajectories
while carrying a load, react to dynamic obstacles, and avoid collisions. We
evaluate two prominent local trajectory planners, Dynamic-Window Approach (DWA)
and Time Elastic Band (TEB) using the metrics that we introduce. Moreover, our
software solution is applicable to any other local planners used in the Robot
Operating System (ROS) framework, without additional programming effort.
