Toward magnetically-coupled reconfigurable modular robots

Abstract

Absnncf-This pap& presents the design of a robotic module that is the building block lor a magnetically-coupled reconfigurahle robot network. The developed module has on-board Computation, IR communication and integrated power. The development of this modular network and the associated reconfiguration methodology is motivated by the premise that magnetic latching is much more plausible than physical latching as scale decreases to the micro and oano levels.

On the potential contributions of hybrid intelligent approaches to Multicomponent Robotic System development

“…For instance, the idea of self-configuration over Yim's polybots is presented in [185]. Regarding coupling methods Liping et al [93] propose one for planetary robots that is based on position sensors, and the work presented in [121] studies one which is based on magnetic couplings that may lead to new proposals of self-configurable robots. In terms of the computational problem, an area of active research is that of the application of intelligent (hybrid) systems for the autonomous on-line reconfiguration of this type of robots.…”

The magnetic self-aligning hermaphroditic connector a scalable approach for modular microrobots

“…It was claimed in [13] that magnetic latching is much more plausible than physical latching as size decreases to the micro-and nanoscale. In fact, it has been shown that geometrical downscaling is favorable for magnet-magnet interaction, in that the force per volume between two magnets is increased by the geometrical scaling factor, while the torque per volume remains constant [16].…”

“…The self-aligning mechanism described in [4] requires that the mating faces are brought together prealigned at a certain distance in order to avoid misalignments. In [2] and [13] electromagnets are used to alter the magnetic fields to allow disconnection. Yet, magnetic induction is very poor when downscaling and thus less effective at the microscale [16].…”

A dynamic self-reconfigurable mobile robot navigation system

“…[6] [7] are examples, which present a selfconfigurable robot design with a distributed software architecture that follows the reconfiguration of hardware.…”