K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26:217--32, 1999.  Home/Search   Document Details and Download   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....of moving individual modules by rotating them, we change the overall robot shape by expanding and contracting the modules. The Molecule robot. A Molecule robot consists of multiple units called Molecules, each consisting of two atoms the size of an apple linked by a rigid connection called a bond [2] (see Figure 1) Each atom has five inter Molecule connection points and two degrees of freedom. One degree of freedom allows the atom to rotate 180 degrees relative to its bond connection; the other allows the atom (thus the entire Molecule) to rotate 180 degrees relative to one of the ....

....say, a lamppost, would be able to reorganize themselves on demand into other ordinary objects, say, a bench or barricade. control system to achieve global motions for the entire robot. We ve found that a four Molecule robot is the smallest one that can move in general ways in the plane [2]; the smallest one that can also climb stairs is an eight Molecule robot. Figure 1 shows our prototype four Molecule robot. The Crystalline atom. The Crystal is our novel selfreconfiguring module, a mechanism with some of the same motive properties as biological muscles that can be closely packed ....

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Kotay, K. and Rus, D. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robo. Autonom. Syst. 26 (1999), 217--232.

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K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26:217--32, 1999.

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K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26:217--32, 1999.

....from one shape to another to best match the shape of the terrain in a statically stable gait, as illustrated in Figure 1. Figure 1. This figure demonstrates using shape metamorphosis for locomotion. A statically stable gait is used to translate the robot from left to right. In our previous work [7, 5, 17, 18, 19] we describe two di#erent robot systems capable of self reconfiguration: the Robotic Molecule system and the Robotic Crystal system. In this paper we examine using self reconfiguration for locomotion an we describe our experimental results in simulation and on the hardware units we built in our ....

....and concave transition to climb over the obstacle. Theorem 1 Suppose a self reconfiguring robot has to travel from an initial Each system implements this operation in a di#erent way, using its own specific actuation capabilities. We have shown these capabilities for Molecule robots in [7] and for Atoms in [19] The Experiments section details how the two systems accomplish such motions. location S to a goal location G in an unknown environment with piecewiseplanar segments. The greedy algorithm in Figure 7 is complete and takes O(1) time to compute a path to the goal, provided ....

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K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion Versatility through Self-reconfiguration In Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26 (1999), pp 217--232.

....particular systems. Several interesting robot designs have been proposed [2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15] For each of these systems, architecture dependent algorithms that couple planning to the specific actuation have been proposed. This includes real breakthroughs in both centralized planning [4, 16] and decentralized planning [6, 7, 12] This body of work has brought valuable insight into planning and control by focusing on designing and building hardware and developing algorithms coupled to specific hardware. Figure 1: Four snapshots of a simulated locomotion task based on the rules of ....

....change shape can lead to water flow like locomotion algorithms that allow the robot to conform to the terrain on which it has to travel, as shown in Fig. 1. Such algorithms have the potential of working well in unstructured environments. In most existing self reconfiguring robot systems (e.g. [3, 4, 9, 14]) an individual module can move in general ways relative to a structure of modules by traveling on the surface of the structure. Specifically, an individual module is capable of: 1) linear motion on plane of modules; 2) convex transitions into a di#erent plane; and (3) concave transitions into ....

K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26:217--32, 1999.

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K. Kotay and D. Rus, Locomotion Versatility through Self-reconfiguration, in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 26, 1999.

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K. Kotay and D. Rus, Locomotion Versatility through Self-reconfiguration, in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 26, 1999.

....can be subsequently input to other applications as described below. 4 Application In developing the 3D MBP algorithm we have been motivated by self repair planning in modular selfreconfigurable systems. Self reconfigurable robots are robots that can change shape to better accomplish a given task [3, 4, 11, 12, 15, 17]. One interesting property of these systems is that they can self repair that is, if a module fails, the rest of the modules collaborate to eject the bad module and replace its functionality. Most modular self reconfiguring systems [11, 4, 15] are grid based so that modules can travel only ....

....shape to better accomplish a given task [3, 4, 11, 12, 15, 17] One interesting property of these systems is that they can self repair that is, if a module fails, the rest of the modules collaborate to eject the bad module and replace its functionality. Most modular self reconfiguring systems [11, 4, 15] are grid based so that modules can travel only along rectilinear paths. Translations are easier than changing the direction of movement, therefore we would like to use 3D MBP to generate good plans for these robots. In this section, we describe the application of 3D MBP to 5 Figure 5: 3D MBP ....

K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion Versatility through Self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26, pp. 217-232, 1999.

....Science Technology Hanover, NH, USA Tsukuba, Japan Introduction The key research questions in self reconfiguring robotics are how to design and engineer robot systems capable of self reconfiguration, and how to plan for such systems. Several interesting robot designs have been proposed [RV01, KR99, MKY 98, TMK 99, FK90, PCSC96, YDR00, SWC99, UK00] For each of these systems, architecture dependent algorithms that couple planning to the specific actuation have been proposed. This includes real breakthroughs in both centralized planning [KR99, YMK 00] and decentralized planning ....

....robot designs have been proposed [RV01, KR99, MKY 98, TMK 99, FK90, PCSC96, YDR00, SWC99, UK00] For each of these systems, architecture dependent algorithms that couple planning to the specific actuation have been proposed. This includes real breakthroughs in both centralized planning [KR99, YMK 00] and decentralized planning [BBR, MYK 01, TMK 99] This body of work has brought some real insight into planning and control. We believe we are at a point where we can step back and examine more general questions about self reconfiguration planning in an ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26:217--32, 1999.

....et al. describe metamorphic robots that can aggregate as 2 D structures with varying geometry, and examine theoretical bounds for self reconfiguration planning. In [7] we have shown a constant time reduction between robotic molecule structures our group has designed to support self reconfiguration [2, 3] and metamorphic robots [11] In [12, 13] we described the Crystalline robot. This robot s novel compression expansion actuation leads to new types of self reconfiguration planning algorithms. The high level idea of a shrinkable module in a reconfigurable system has Figure 3: The mechanics of a 2D ....

K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion Versatility through Self-reconfiguration In Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 1998 (to appear).

....actuating modules. A self reconfiguring robot could, for example, form into a legged robot for rapid locomotion, then reform into a snake to navigate a tunnel, while using some of its modules to form a gripper to manipulate an object. Several self reconfigurable systems have been proposed [1, 4, 6, 2, 9, 11, 5]. In all these systems, the actuation is distributed. However, if the control is centralized, the overall e#ciency of the system may be quite low. We seek to enable decentralized approaches to path planning and actuation for self reconfigurable systems. These algorithms lead to more e#cient ....

....modules travel over the surface of the robot. However, we can easily imagine systems of that nature using similar path planning over their surface, rather than through the interior, with the surface modules obtaining similar pellets. For systems with more complex actuation, such as the molecule [2], the path planning would have a larger branching factor, and the pellets a bit more configuration information, but should be handled much the same way. Some of the actuation constraints of the crystal are not present in other systems, so that the PacMan algorithm may be overly complex, but it may ....

K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 26:217--32, 1999.

....we call a Robotic Molecule. This module has already been prototyped. Our experiments demostrate that it is capable of self reconfiguration in three dimensions. We have also demonstrated how systems composed of robotic molecules can use self reconfiguration to increase their locomotive versatility [15, 16]. The robotic molecule uses 4 rotational degrees of freedom to accomplish motion relative to a structure that conssits of identical modules. In this paper we propose a di#erent approach to self reconfiguring robot systems. The new approach uses an actuation mechanism inspired by that that of a ....

K. Kotay and D. Rus. Locomotion Versatility through Self-reconfiguration In Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 1998 (to appear).

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