Reconfigurable Modular Robot Configuration Design Theory And Kinematics

A reconfigurable modular robot system consists of a collection of individual link and joint components that can be assembled into many different kinematic configurations according to the changing task and changing environment。This kind of character is badly needed by modern manufacturing for the reason that it is more effective than traditional manufacturing system and it can reduce the cost. Based on this point, this paper will do research on the design of the basic module, the representation of configurations, the optimization of configurations and kinematics for modular robots.The domestic and foreign researching status is analyzed in this paper. A collection of modules are designed in concept. These modules consist of revolute module, swing module, cube module and link module. And harmonic gear is employed in the design of mechanical structure.The representation of configurations is the key to the optimization. A configuration incidence matrix is proposed in this paper. All information of a configuration is included in the matrix. A kind of optimization model is introduced in this paper. Kinematic performance measures are made into formula. Genetic algorithm is employed in this optimization. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by computation examples. Kinematics for Modular Robots is very important. In this paper, the forward kinematic model are derived from the Product-of-Exponentials formula. And this kind of model is easy and quick. A multipurpose computation program for forward kinematics is designed on the platform of MATLAB. The inverse kinematics is obtained through the differential kinematics equations based on the product-of-exponential formulas. The Newton-Raphson iteration method is employed for solution. A multipurpose computation program for inverse kinematics is designed on the platform of MATLAB.