A Useful Metric For Modular Robot Motion Planning

In this paper we examine the problem of dynamic self-reconfiguration of a class of modular robotic systems referred to as metamorphic systems. A metamorphic robotic system is a collection of mechatronic modules, each of which has the ability to connect, disconnect, and climb over adjacent modules. We define a concept of distance between metamorphic robot configurations which satisfies the formal properties of a metric. This metric, called the configuration metric is then applied to the automatic self-reconfiguration of metamorphic systems from any initial to any final specified configuration. The technique of Simulated Annealing is used to drive the re-configuration process with the configuration metric as the cost function. The relative performance of simulated annealing with this cost function is shown to be superior then simulated annealing using other cost functions. 1 Introduction A metamorphic robotic system [Ch94] is a collection of independently controlled mechatronic modules,..