Dynamic modeling and configuration adaptive control for modular reconfigurable robot

Abstract

A unit module of the mobile modular reconfigurable robot (M 2 rBot) with the 12 connection ways is first introduced. For expressing the spatial connection relations and the traversing paths of the M 2 rBot, a novel method of the automatic generation of the spatial connection matrix is presented based on our proposed double-module space pose transformation. The motion equations are also automatically generated to solve the reconstruction problems of mechanical configuration, kinematics, and dynamics. This method enables to analyze the kinematics and dynamics for both serial and multi-branch modular robots with different configurations. As for the control strategies, a fuzzy robust adaptive controller is also developed to adapt to the different configurations without adjusting any control parameters. The results show that the novel method is effective, and the proposed controller can satisfy tracking performances and quickly adapt to the change of the configurations, the frictions, and the external disturbances. The proposed method and controller are easy to extend to other modular robots.