Configuration And Kinematics Design Of Reconfigurable Modular Robots

With increasing application range of robots, the tasks and the environment of robots' are unpredictable, therefore is the reason the Reconfigurable Modular Robots being brought forward. The Reconfigurable Modular Robot consists of a series of modular joints and links of various sizes. It then can be assembled by choosing the modules in order to accomplish the special task. In the thesis, the principles of modular design and configuration design as well as kinematics design of reconfigurable modular robots will be studied with attempt.Configuration design is an important content of reconfigurable modular robot design. The character of robot configuration design is divided into two steps: conceptual configuration design and configuration design. The result of conceptual configuration design makes sure the system structure of robots can accomplish the given tasks, which reflects the basic structural configuration. The result of configuration design determines which the specific modules to be chosen and their assembly relation concretely. Finally, a genetic algorithm is selected as the configuration design optimization method.To establish the unification model of the kinematical analyze of reconfigurable modular robots is one of the main contents of designed reconfigurable modular robots. The kinematical model contains forward kinematical model and inversekinematical model. Forward kinematical model is established by twist product-of-exponential formulas. The method merely requires product of transformation matrix of every given module according to the order of the assembled modular robot* namely from foundation to end. Then forward kinematics equation is gotten. The method greatly simplifies the bothered case that makes sure coordinate frame during calculating robot kinematics. The inverse kinematics model of reconfigurable modular robots is based on the local product-of-exponential formulas and differential kinematics equations. Then the Newton-Raphson iteration method is employed for obtaining numerical value iteration formulas of inverse kinematics. Matlab that is adopted in computer languages establishes User Interfaces of forward kinematics and inverse kinematics. The User Interfaces more simplify calculation of forward kinematics and inverse kinematics of robots.