Assembly sequence planning for shape heterogeneous modular robot systems

Abstract

Modular robots are robots capable of changing their morphology to perform various tasks and to adapt to different environments. In order to explore these versatile robots potentialities, they must be assembled and operated in as many different configurations as possible. This paper presents an original assembly sequence planning to target structures formed by shape heterogeneous modular robots systems. Each robot system is composed by any number of rectangular modules joined edge to edge, forming arbitrary shapes. The new planner is divided into three original algorithms and constitute a complete and novel method to build target structures without internal holes.