Motion Planning of Kinematically Redundant 12-tetrahedral Rolling Robot

Abstract

The 12-tetrahedral robot is an addressable reconfigurable technology (ART)-based variable geometry truss mechanism with 26 extensible struts and nine nodes arranged in a tetrahedral mesh. The robot has the capability of configuring its shape to adapt to environmental requirements, which makes it suitable for space exploration. This paper considers the motion planning problem for the robot in terms of gait planning and trajectory planning. First, a gait planning method is developed that limits the forward falling angles to only 25 degrees. Then, according to the given gait, the jerk-bounded method and inverse kinematics are utilized to calculate the trajectories of the nodes and the struts, respectively. A robot system model was built in ADAMS and simulations were conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the motion planning method.

Dynamical Modelling and a Decentralized Adaptive Controller for a 12-Tetrahedral Rolling Robot

“…The gait planning problem of the robot has been developed in [10], where the motion of the robot is divided into several steps and only certain struts are regulated to achieve the motion in each step. In this paper, we only focus on the executive layer and detail the implementation of the strut controller.…”

“…The physical properties and other specifications of the model are summarized in Table 1. In [10], we presented a motion planning approach for a 12-tetrahedral robot, including gait planning and trajectory planning. During the movement of the 12-tetrahedral robot according to the given gait, only certain nodes and struts are involved in every phase of the gait.…”

“…In [9], the authors analysed the kinematics of different motion phases of a 1-tetrahedral robot and presented the rolling critical condition. In [10], the authors proposed the direct and inverse kinematics for the 12-tetrahedral robot and presented a motion planning method for a robot based on the proposed kinematics. In [11][12][13], the authors planned gaits for 4-, 6-, and 8-tetrahedral robots based on a simulating walker model.…”

Contact Mechanics-based Gait Generation and Trajectory Tracking Algorithm for Radial-skeleton Robots

“…(1) Edge-skeleton shape-changing robots: The edges are composed of actuators or links, forming the robot skeleton to make space for the payload. According to the type of edges, edge-skeleton shape-changing robots can be classified as rigid-shell robots (Bicchi et al, 1997;Hirano et al, 2013;Joshi et al, 2010;Mojabi et al, 2002;Mukherjee et al, 2002;Otani et al, 2006), soft-shell robots (Masuda & Ishikawa, 2017;Sugiyama & Hirai, 2006;Wait et al, 2010), and multi-linkage robots (Abrahantes et al, 2007;Hamlin & Sanderson, 1994;Liu et al, 2012;Sastra et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2016;Yamawaki et al, 2003;Yim, 1994;Yim et al, 2000). Zagal et al (2012) proposed an octahedral rigid-edgeskeleton robot by using a hydraulic drive; The structural deformability and high symmetry enable the robot to pass through narrow L-shaped, T-shaped, and Y-shaped pipe joints without a steering mechanism.…”