Motion Planning for a Self-Reconfigurable Modular Robot

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 generating dynamic motion. Motion planning for self-reconfiguration is not straightforward because the modular structure allows many combinatorial configurations, and also the proposed module has only two degrees of freedom. We will show a motion planning method for a particular class of multi-module structure, based on global planning and local motion scheme selection. The fundamental module motion will also be demonstrated through hardware experiments.