A Soft Body Interconnect For Self Reconfigurable Modular Robots

Abstract: Disaster support and recovery generally involve highly irregular and dangerous environments. Modular robots are a salient solution to support search and rescue efforts but are still limited to do their reliance on a rigid structure design. To enhance flexibility and resilience to damage, a soft-body interconnection mechanism for self-reconfigurable modular robotic systems has been developed. The soft-body interconnection mechanism utilizes elastomeric polymers instead of a rigid body. Hence, it is capable of deforming under extreme loads without damage. This thesis presents the work completed towards the realization of a soft-body interconnection mechanism. The functional requirements of the soft-body mechanism were broken down into two separate modules for extension and capture. An initial simulation demonstrated the inability of using a simulated model made of hypo-elastic materials as a basis for design. Hence, an iterative design process was used to develop an initial extension and capture soft-body mechanisms that conformed to the desired performance parameters. An empirical study which varied multiple structural parameters was then completed with the initial extension and capture soft-body mechanisms as a basis for the modified designs. The data from the study was correlated with measured performance data with resulted in diagrams useful for the optimal design of soft-body extension and capture mechanisms. The use of the diagrams for design was demonstrated in the design and development of a soft-body interconnection mechanism for an in-house designed small hard shell modular robot system.

What Is Self Reconfiguring Modular Robot Self-reconfigurable modular robots are autonomous kinematic machines that may take on a variety of shapes and configurations. They are also known as modular self-reconfiguring robotic systems. In addition to the conventional actuation, sensing, and control that are typically found in fixed-morphology robots, self-reconfiguring robots have the ability to deliberately change their own shape by rearranging the connectivity of their parts. This enables them to adapt to new circumstances, perform new tasks, or recover from damage more quickly than fixed-morphology robots. How You Will Benefit (I) Insights, and validations about the following topics: Chapter 1: Self-reconfiguring modular robot Chapter 2: Robot Chapter 3: Reconfigurable computing Chapter 4: Utility fog Chapter 5: Ant colony optimization algorithms Chapter 6: Swarm intelligence Chapter 7: Claytronics Chapter 8: Reconfigurable manufacturing system Chapter 9: Control reconfiguration Chapter 10: Programmable matter Chapter 11: Physicomimetics Chapter 12: Webots Chapter 13: Daniela L. Rus Chapter 14: Robotics Chapter 15: MIBE architecture Chapter 16: Morphogenetic robotics Chapter 17: Torch (machine learning) Chapter 18: Kilobot Chapter 19: Molecubes Chapter 20: Soft robotics Chapter 21: Continuum robot (II) Answering the public top questions about self reconfiguring modular robot. (III) Real world examples for the usage of self reconfiguring modular robot in many fields. (IV) 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technologies in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of self reconfiguring modular robot' technologies. Who This Book Is For Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of self reconfiguring modular robot.

In this study, an efficient algorithm has been developed for the dynamic stability analysis of self-reconfigurable, modular robots. Such an algorithm is essential for the motion planning of self-reconfigurable robotic systems. The building block of the algorithm is the determination of the stability of a rigid body in contact with the ground when there exists Coulomb friction between the two bodies. This problem is linearized by approximating the friction cone with a pyramid and then solved, efficiently, using linear programming. The effects of changing the number of faces of the pyramid and the number of contact points are investigated. A novel definition of stability, called percentage stability, is introduced to counteract the adverse effects of the static indeterminacy problem between two contacting bodies. The algorithm developed for the dynamic stability analysis, is illustrated via various case studies using the recently introduced self-reconfigurable robotic system, called I-Cubes.