A motion planning method for a self-reconfigurable modular robot

Abstract

This paper addresses motion planning of a homogeneous modular robotic system. The modules have self-reconfiguration capability so that a group of the modules can construct a robotic structure. Motion planning for self-reconfiguration is a kind of computationally difficult problem because of many combinatorial possibilities of modular configuration and the restricted degrees of freedom of the module; only two rotation axes per module. We will show a motion planning method for a class of multimodule structures. It is based on global planning and local motion scheme selection that is effective to solve the complicated planning problem.