Walk on the wild side [modular robot motion]
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Abstract:
Designers of the PolyBot robot system solve the challenges of locomotion by mimicking locomotion in the animal world. PolyBot is a robot system made of many repeated simple modules. These modules can be connected together to form a variety of shapes to form a new system enabling a variety of functionalities.Keywords:
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Robot locomotion
Modular robots consist of many mechatronic modules that can be connected into various shapes and therefore adapted for a given task or environment. Motion of the robots can be achieved by locomotion generators that control joints connecting the modules. An important advantage of modular robots is their ability to recover from failures by ejecting and replacing damaged modules. This type of failure recovery may be precluded due to inability of the broken modules to cooperate or when no spare modules are available. In such a case, locomotion of a damaged robot should be adapted to allow the robot to reach a repair station or even to finish its task without the need to exchange the broken modules. In this paper, we investigate how to recover from failures using the concept of motion planning with motion primitives and how to adapt the primitives to new situations. The proposed systems allows modular robots to move even if some modules fail. Besides modular robots, the proposed system is suitable also for other robots that can be driven by locomotion generators such as legged or snake-like robots.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Spare part
Robot locomotion
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Modular or re-configurable robots have been studied and developed over two decades. Most researches focus on mechatronic interfaces and re-configurable capabilities. However, less attention has been paid to dynamics and control. Consequently, the control performance of a modular robot has never been comparable with an integrated robot, due to the lack of proper handling of the dynamic interactions among the modules. In this paper, the application of the virtual decomposition control to modular robot manipulators is discussed. A high-speed databus with a data rate of 100 Mbps is used for necessary information exchange among the modules. The dynamics based control is fully handled by the local embedded controllers, whereas the host computer handles the kinematics related computation. The stability of the entire robot is rigorously guaranteed. This research aims at giving the modular robots the comparable control performance as the integrated robots, while keeping the fundamental feasibilities such as low cost for mass production, high flexibility, and easy use and expansion.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
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Bipedal robot is a main part of humanoid robot. In general, the greater the number of degrees of freedom of a robot, the more sophisticated electro-mechanical design and the more adaptable ability of a robot. There are many ways to construct a bipedal robot. One of them is to construct it directly with several modular actuators. The advantage of modular design is that it can reduce the complexity of the system. In this paper, a bipedal robot that consists of 12 modular actuators is introduced. Firstly, a modular actuator with a double support structure and a bipedal robot constructed by these modular actuators are introduced. Then, gait planning and simulation of this robot based on zero moment point principle is introduced. Finally, the prototype of this robot is presented and discussed.
Zero moment point
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Robot calibration
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Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Robot locomotion
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In this paper, a novel robotic platform is introduced, which is able to support other modular robots during the locomotion or self-repair process to increase efficiency of locomotion, payload and runtime. The robot is able to operate autonomous as a stand-alone robot in a swarm or aggregate into robot organisms. We outline the developmental phases of the final robot generation, including mechanics, electronics and software design.
Payload (computing)
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Robot locomotion
Autonomous robot
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Heterogeneous modular robots are a subject of great complexity due to the control problems derived from the different characteristics of each of the modules and the interactions amongst them. In this article, a control structure based on behaviors for robots composed of different drive units and other purpose modules is presented. This article mainly presents an heterogeneous control layer to allow a transparent control of the robot no matter how it is configured. This development is aimed to chain-type robots and focused on pipe inspection and exploration tasks.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
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A heterogeneous, mobile, self-reconfigurable and modular robot platform is being developed in the projects SYMBRION and REPLICATOR. The locomotion of the robots as well as forming of the robot organisms will be controlled using evolutionary and bio-inspired techniques. As the robots are not available at the beginning of the projects and experiments are time consuming and carry risks of damaging the robots, the evolutionary algorithms will be run using a simulation. The simulation has to provide realistic movements of a swarm of robots, simulating the docking procedure between the robots as well as simulating organism motion. High requirements are imposed on such a simulator. We developed the Robot3D simulator, which dynamically simulates a swarm of mobile robots as well as robot organisms. In this paper we will give an overview of the simulation framework, we will show first results of performance tests and we will present applications for which Robot3D has already been used.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Swarm Robotics
Robot locomotion
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SUMMARY In this paper, a control design methodology for a new class of modular robots, so-called “uni-drive modular robots” is introduced. Uni-drive modular robots have a substantial advantage over regular modular robots in terms of the mass of each module since then employ only a single drive for powering all the joints. The drive is mounted at the robot base and all joints tap power from this single drive using clutches. By controlling the engagement time of the clutches, the position and velocity of the joints are regulated. After reviewing the structure of the uni-drive modular robot, a self-expansion formula to generate the dynamics of the robot is introduced. The control of uni-drive n -module robots is realized by blending independent joint control and theory of variable structure systems via a pulse width modulation technique. A uni-drive modular robot is used to conduct simulations and validate the control design technique.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
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A modular robot has a distributed mechanical composition which can make various configurations and also make locomotion in a wide variety of configurations. Modular robots are thought to be useful in extreme or unknown environments by adaptively changing their shape and locomotion patterns. As for locomotion, two types can be used; one is whole-body fixed-configuration locomotion and the other is locomotion by self-reconfiguration. In this paper we deal with the former type of locomotion which is realized by coordinated joint actuation. So far, proposed control methods for whole-body locomotion by modular robots have been based on predefined locomotion sequences. However, locomotion based on predefined sequences cannot adapt to changing terrain conditions such as uphill, downhill, slippery and sticky grounds. To solve such problems, we propose a distributed control mechanism using a CPG controller which enables adaptive locomotion by modular robots. Besides the real-time CPG control we introduce a decentralized control mechanism for detecting the situation that the robot is stuck and initiating transformation to another shape for recovering the situation. The results of various hardware experiments by 4-legged structure prove the feasibility of the method for adaptive locomotion and transformation by our M-TRAN II modules.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Control reconfiguration
Robot locomotion
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Citations (60)
A modular robot has a distributed mechanical composition which can make various configurations and also make locomotion in a wide variety of configurations. Modular robots are thought to be useful in extreme or unknown environments by adaptively changing their shape and locomotion patterns. As for locomotion, two types can be used; one is whole-body fixed-configuration locomotion and the other is locomotion by self-reconfiguration. In this paper we deal with the former type of locomotion which is realized by coordinated joint actuation. So far, proposed control methods for whole-body locomotion by modular robots have been based on predefined locomotion sequences. However, locomotion based on predefined sequences cannot adapt to changing terrain conditions such as uphill, downhill, slippery and sticky grounds. To solve such problems, we propose a distributed control mechanism using a CPG controller which enables adaptive locomotion by modular robots. Besides the real-time CPG control we introduce a decentralized control mechanism for detecting the situation that the robot is stuck and initiating transformation to another shape for recovering the situation. The results of various hardware experiments by 4-legged structure prove the feasibility of the method for adaptive locomotion and transformation by our M-TRAN II modules.
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Control reconfiguration
Robot locomotion
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Citations (11)