Review Reconfigurability in Automobiles—Structure, Manufacturing and Algorithm for Automobiles Zheming Zhuang 1, Yuntao Guan 1, Shuangjia Xu 2,4, and Jian S. Dai 3,4, * 1 Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of the Ministry of Education, Centre for Advanced Mechanisms and Robotics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China zhuangzheming@tju.edu.cn (Z.Z.); guanyuntao_018@tju.edu.cn (Y.G.) 2 DH Robotics Ltd, Shenzhen, China; Shuangjia.xu@dh-robotics.com 3 Institute for Robotics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 4 Centre for Robotics Research, King’s College London, London, UK * Correspondence: jian.dai@kcl.ac.uk     Received: 9 November 2022 Accepted: 10 November 2022 Published: 18 December 2022   Abstract: For the automobile design and manufacturing, as a typical representative of the industry, the development and upgrading represent the application of the state-of-the-art technology in the industry. With a period of development, the related technology of traditional manufacturing factories for automobiles are found with some common issues while improving. As such, the reconfigurable intelligent manufacturing factory of the automobiles is fast developed with focus on reconfigurability in structures, manufactures and algorithms, thus advancing the level of the reconfigurable intelligent manufacturing continuously. With a sufficient reconfigurable manufacturing technology as the basis, reconfigurability can be better introduced to the structure design and the driving algorithms of the automobiles. Reconfigurability provides a new bridge for transforming the traditional automobile to the reconfigurable automobile, and a new driving force for the upgrading of the reconfigurable driving algorithms.

Reconfigurable robotic hands can constitute one of the future trends of dexterous manipulator design, as they can strike a balance between precision, force exertion, flexibility, and adaptability. However, the feasible manipulation workspace of a reconfigurable robotic hand, the metamorphic hand, is complex as the finger operation planes alter with the reconfigurable palm's motions. Different useful workspace approaches and grasp quality metrics have been introduced, but a precision manipulation workspace (PMW) approach for reconfigurable robotic hands has yet to be presented. This paper presents a hand workspace taxonomy based on previous studies, and a new approach to obtaining a PMW of a robotic hand which satisfies three properties: singularity avoidance, interference avoidance, and force-closure. A grasp quality metric, termed the minimum friction coefficient (MFC), is introduced to indicate the force-closure conditions of a robotic hand's configurations. Unlike the previous grasp quality metrics targeting online grasp planning tasks, this MFC-based measure focuses on the offline design of robotic hands. This method is essential for conducting grasp planning, design optimization, and actuation reduction for reconfigurable robotic hands. Further, the approach is applied to a three-fingered metamorphic hand, and the results are studied thoroughly.