JL-2: A Mobile Multi-robot System with Docking and Manipulating Capabilities

This paper presents a new version of the JL series reconfigurable multi-robot system called JL-2. By virtue of the docking manipulator composed of a parallel mechanism and a cam gripper, every mobile robot in the JL-2 system is able to not only perform tasks in parallel, e. g. moving and grasping, but also dock with each other even if there are large misalignments between two robots. A motorized spherical joint is formed between two docked robots to enhance the locomotion capability of JL-2. To fulfill the demands of reconfiguration, a distributed control system and sonar based docking guidance system are designed for the JL-2 prototype. Based on the above design, the JL-2 prototype has been built and successfully demonstrated to confirm the validity and functionality of the proposed capabilities.