Structure Design and Simulation Analysis of an Innovative Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robot-360bot

360botG2 — An improved unit of mobile self-assembling modular robotic system aiming at exploration in real world

“…where the relation between δ and ' l can be found in [15]. As explained before, the relatively strong motion ability of 360botG2 comes from its rotating inner cube, which is the main body of the robot.…”

“…This design goal can be broken into four parts: (1) We want to find a tradeoff design between mobility and the ability of reconfiguration, not just suitable for self-assembling or self-reconfiguring; (2) It is better if the DoFs can serve both the mobility and the self-reconfigurable ability, like the robots in category IV; (3) The module should have a good locomotion ability for potential applications in self-assembly and exploration; (4) At last, the mechanism should be as simple as possible, which is good for the manufacture, control, and robustness of the system. Functions and implementations of unit module for system performance At last, we design an improved module called 360botG2, which makes a distinct improvement over the first generation-360bot [15]. 360botG2 is also a member of Part IV and makes full use of its DoFs.…”

Dynamic modeling and configuration adaptive control for modular reconfigurable robot

“…For the M 2 rbot, the following characteristics are considered: the simple module structure which can move independently, the rich connecting surfaces and connecting ports, and the reliable locking mechanism. The basic design of the M 2 rbot is identical to the former 360bot 12 and M 2 sbot 13 as shown in Figure 1. The M 2 rbot has similar sizes and similar physical properties to the 360bot and M 2 sbot, but it can be more firmly locked and be less weight.…”

“…Several literatures of the mobile architecture were published, such as Trimobot, 6 UBot, 7 ModRED, 8 Scout robot, 9 AMOEBA, 10 Sambot, 11 360bot, 12 M 2 sbot, 13 and OMNIMO. 14 Previous researchers mainly focused on the structure design [12][13][14] and the locomotion and control. 6,7,9,[15][16][17] However, the research of automatic generation of motion equations is not enough, and especially the configuration adaptive control is less.…”

Reconfiguration planning for wheel-manipulator robots

“…For the manipulator, the energy also has near linear relation with the angular displacements of its joints. Therefore, we can take the total lengths of the trajectories traveled by the modules plus the total differences of the joint angles as an approximation for the energy [10]. Although the actual trajectories is also difficult to obtain, approximations of the trajectories can be used.…”