Mechanical Design of a Module for Autonomous Reconfigurable Robots

Andres Castano and Peter Will. Mechanical Design of a Module for Autonomous Reconfigurable Robots. In Proc. 2000 IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2203–2209, 2000.

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Abstract

The goal of the Conro project is to build deployable self-reconfigurable robots, i.e., small homogeneous modular robots that can be reconfigured into different shapes such as snakes or hexapods. In this paper we describe the mechanical design of the first generation of Conro modules: the philosophy of their design, their parts and functionality and derive two inequalities that relate the design parameters of a module. Each module is fully self-contained in every sense; it carries its own CPU, power supply, and actuators. The modules were designed to work in groups, as robots, and thus, they also support inter-module communication. We conclude the paper describing a Conro hexapod as an example of the robots that can be built using these modules.

BibTeX Entry

@InProceedings{	  castano2000mechanical-design-of-a-module-for-autonomous,
  abstract	= {The goal of the Conro project is to build deployable
		  self-reconfigurable robots, i.e., small homogeneous modular
		  robots that can be reconfigured into different shapes such
		  as snakes or hexapods. In this paper we describe the
		  mechanical design of the first generation of Conro modules:
		  the philosophy of their design, their parts and
		  functionality and derive two inequalities that relate the
		  design parameters of a module. Each module is fully
		  self-contained in every sense; it carries its own CPU,
		  power supply, and actuators. The modules were designed to
		  work in groups, as robots, and thus, they also support
		  inter-module communication. We conclude the paper
		  describing a Conro hexapod as an example of the robots that
		  can be built using these modules.},
  author	= {Andres Castano and Peter Will},
  booktitle	= iros-00,
  pages		= {2203--2209},
  title		= {Mechanical Design of a Module for Autonomous
		  Reconfigurable Robots},
  year		= {2000}
}