A multi-layered planner for self-reconfiguration of a uniform group of I-Cube modules

Abstract

In this paper, we present a multilayered planner for the motion of modules in a uniform group of I-Cube self-reconfiguring modular robotic system. The planner uses metacubes, the high-level abstraction of 8C16L groups. It combines distributed approaches at the high-level with lowlevel trajectory computation for the actual modules which can be completed in O(n) steps where n is the number of the cubes in the system, and pre-defined rules for link motions. Mechatronic properties of the latest version of the reconfiguring modules are presented as well as results of the latest hardware and software experiments with the I-Cube modules.