Motion Planning for a Modular Self-Reconfiguring Robotic System

. In this paper, we address the issue of motion planning for a bipartite class of modular self-reconfiguring robotic system (I-Cubes) that is a collection of active elements providing reconfiguration (3-DOF manipulators called links) and passive elements acting as connectors (cubes). The links, capable of attaching/detaching themselves from/to cubes, can position and orient the cubes. Current solutions for motion planning and reconfiguration of I-Cubes include multilayered planners that divide a given problem into tractable sub-problems to be evaluated using heuristic methods. The system implementation, its representation in simulation, search algorithms resulting from this representation, and simulation examples are presented. Keywords: self-reconfiguration, metamorphic robots, path planning 1. Introduction Statically stable gaits for mobile robots include wheels, threads, and similar mechanisms. These methods, although providing fast locomotion on level ground, generally do not p..

Versatility for Unknown Worlds: Mobile Sensors and Self-reconfiguring Robots

In this paper we propose mobile sensors and self-reconfiguring robots to increase the versatility of mobile robots in unstructured environments. Mobile sensors enrich the class of on-line algorithms that can be performed with fixed architecture robots by providing flexibility in information gathering and extraction from the world. A self-reconfiguring robot can autonomously and dynamically reconfigure in a variety of shapes to support multiple modalities of locomotion, manipulation, and sensing. We describe experiments with mobile sensors and self-reconfiguring robots. 1 Introduction We wish for robots to be versatile in mundane tasks in structured, as well as unstructured environments. Such robots must have the ability to manipulate objects and move flexibly. Sometimes, this requires that the robots support di#erent modalities of sensing, manipulation, and locomotion. For example, suppose a distributed team of robots is to clean up my o#ce. This task requires that the robots climb u..

On the probabilistic foundations of probabilistic roadmap planning

Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics2