Transformation of Control in Congruent Self-Reconfigurable Robot Topologies

Much work on self-reconfigurable robotics has been focused on motion planning and physical reconfiguration of the robot. Using the Superbot self-reconfigurable robot, we focus on the details of realizing locomotion gaits given that a single robot topology can be realized in a large number of different ways. That is, each module in the robot topology has 4 symmetric orientations that are functional and shape equivalent. Once a role is selected for each module, such as through the use of hormone-inspired control, each module's role is supplied with a gait template which then must be transformed to suit the local configurations of each module with respect to the global topology. We provide a theoretical framework for which this can be accomplished.