A Distributed Reconfiguration Planning for Modular Robots

Self-reconfigurable modular robots are usually composed of multiple modules with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations by themselves. The reconfiguration planning problem is finding what sequence of reconfiguration actions are required for one arrangement of modules to transform into another. We present a novel reconfiguration planning algorithm for modular robots. The algorithm compares the initial configuration with the goal configuration efficiently. The reconfiguration actions can be executed in a distributed manner so that each module can efficiently finish its reconfiguration task which results in a global reconfiguration for the system. In the end, the algorithm is demonstrated on real modular robots and some example reconfiguration tasks are provided.

Featured on Engadget!

Publications

• C. Liu, M. Whitzer, and M. Yim, “A distributed reconfiguration planning algorithm for modular robots,” Ieee robotics and automation letters, vol. 4, iss. 4, pp. 4231-4238, 2019.
  [Bibtex]

  @Article{CL:MW:MY:19,
  title={A Distributed Reconfiguration Planning Algorithm for Modular Robots},
  author={C. {Liu} and M. {Whitzer} and M. {Yim}},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  year={2019},
  volume={4},
  number={4},
  pages={4231-4238},
  doi={10.1109/LRA.2019.2930432},
  ISSN={2377-3766},
  month={Oct},
  pdf={https://www.modlabupenn.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/chao_smores_reconfiguration_2019.pdf}
  }