Journal
ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS
Volume 62, Issue 7, Pages 1002-1015Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.robot.2013.08.008
Keywords
Modular robots; Homogeneous; Self-reconfiguration planning
Funding
- NASA [NE-NNX11AM14A EPSCoR]
- NASA Nebraska Space Grant Consortium
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This paper presents a homogeneous modular robot system design based on four per-module degrees of freedom (DOF), including a prismatic DOF to increase the versatility of its reconfiguration and locomotion capabilities. The ModRED (Modular Robot for Exploration and Discovery) modules are developed with rotary-plate genderless single sided docking mechanisms (RoGenSiD) that allow chain-type configurations and lead towards hybrid-type configurations. Various locomotion gaits are simulated through the Webots robot simulator and implemented in the real ModRED system. This work also addresses the problem of dynamic reconfiguration in a modular self-reconfigurable robot (MSR). The self-reconfiguration problem is modeled as an instance of the graph-based coalition formation problem. We formulate the problem as a linear program that finds the best partition or coalition structure among a set of ModRED modules. The technique is verified experimentally for a variety of settings on an accurately simulated model of the ModRED robot within the Webots robot simulator. Our experimental results show that our technique can find the best partition with a reasonably low computational overhead. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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