hTetro-Infi: A Reconfigurable Floor Cleaning Robot With Infinite Morphologies

Abstract

The development of floor cleaning robots is an emerging area in robotics. Maximizing the area coverage is a foremost mission for a floor cleaning robot. Reconfigurable floor cleaning robots outperform floor cleaning robots with fixed morphology in the aspect of area coverage. A reconfigurable robot should be more flexible in changing its morphologies by considering the shapes of objects occupied in an environment to gain more coverage. Nevertheless, the state of the art methods of tiling robots considers only a limited number of morphologies for the reconfiguration, which is not sufficient to match the shape of an object. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel method to synthesize an appropriate morphology for a reconfigurable robot in accordance with the shape of an object. The proposed concept is named hTetro-Infi since it is not limited to a finite number of morphologies. The major novelty of the proposed concept overt the state of the art is the consideration of an infinite number of morphologies for the reconfiguration without sticking into a limited number of morphologies. Feedforward Neural Network (FNN) and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) were used for determining the hinge angle required for synthesizing a given morphology. Different configurations of FNNs and ANFISs were trained and evaluated to find the most suitable configurations. The area coverage performance of the proposed hTetro-Infi was compared against that of the state of the art methods of an existing class of tiling robots, which considers only a limited number of morphologies, through simulations. According to the statistical conclusions, the proposed hTetro-Infi is capable of significantly improving area coverage compared to an existing tiling-theory based floor cleaning robot. Furthermore, the area coverage improvement of hTetro-Infi is noteworthy. Therefore, the proposed concept is beneficial in improving the abilities of a reconfigurable cleaning robot. Real-world experiments with the hardware platform of the robot for evaluating the performance is expected to be conducted in the next phase of the work. Furthermore, consideration of hTetro-Infi for navigation through confined areas is proposed for future work. INDEX TERMS Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, area coverage, feedfoward neural network, tiling robotic, floor cleaning robot, reconfigurable robot.

Locomotion with Pedestrian Aware from Perception Sensor by Pavement Sweeping Reconfigurable Robot

“…The first is a robot that comprises a group of intelligent modules, and the second is a robot that comprises of a group of modules where the intelligence comes from an external agent. In our previous work, we have classified self-reconfigurable robots into three categories which are nested reconfigurability [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], intra reconfigurability [ 19 , 20 ], and inter reconfigurability [ 21 , 22 ]. The hTetro described earlier has nested reconfigurability.…”

Toward Pleomorphic Reconfigurable Robots for Optimum Coverage

“…Low-level controlling functionalities of robots, such as path tracking abilities, have also been extensively studied [26,27]. Furthermore, reconfiguration strategies for improving the area coverage of tiling robots have been proposed [28,29]. With the aid of developments discussed above, reconfigurable tiling robots have proven their versatility in floor cleaning applications.…”

Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm-Based Autonomous Path Planning for Hinged-Tetro Reconfigurable Tiling Robot

“…An inter-reconfigurable robot consists of a congregation of homogeneous or heterogeneous modules and forms a variety of morphologies through assembly and disassembly process. Examples include chain-type systems like Tetriamond [13], CONRO [14], hTetro-Infi [15], hTrihex [16], Crystal [17], and M-Lattice [18]; as well as hybridtype robots like M-TRAN [19].…”