Analysis and Synthesis of a Kind of Mobility Reconfigurable Robot with Multi-Task Capability

Abstract

Compared with the fixed morphological robots, the self-reconfigurable robots (SR) are very flexible as they can adapt to a wide range of task requirements. However, the current efforts on SR mainly focus on the locomotion issues, while the manipulation capabilities of existing systems are still quite limited. In this paper, a new kind of mobility reconfigurable robotic structures (MRRS) with self-reconfiguration ability is presented. The reconfigurable topology and variable mobility characteristics of the MRRS are realized by integrating the cooperative kinematic mechanism (CKM) and the separable parallel kinematic mechanism (SPKM) into one robotic system, which makes the robot capable of reconfiguring its mechanical assembly to adapt to the multiple motion task requirements. Based on Lie group of displacements, the commonly used robotic tasks are first classified into three categories: positioning motion, tooling motion and grasping motion, possible motion types of these tasks are enumerated, then how to deal with the multiple tasks by using the MRRS is synthesized systematically. Finally, a multi-task working process is employed as an example to illustrate the advantages of this reconfigurable robotic structure.