A Motion Generation Method for a Modular Robot

This paper discusses motion generation of a homogeneous modular robot called Modular Transformer (MTRAN). The modules are designed to be self-reconfigurable so that a collection of the modules can transform themselves into a robotic structure. The motion generation of the self-reconfigurable robot is indeed a computationally difficult problem due to many combinatorial possibilities of module configuration, even though the module itself is simple with two degrees of freedom. This paper will describe a motion generation method for a class of multi-module structure, based on a motion planner and a motion scheduler. The motion planner has two-layer structure with global and local planners. The former is in charge of planning overall movement of the cluster whereas the latter decides locally coordinated module motions called motion schemes. After the motion is generated as a sequence of single motion schemes, the motion scheduler processes the output plan to allow parallel motions to improve the efficiency. The effectiveness of the motion generator is verified through a many-module simulation.