Research on mechanism design and motion planning of a modular self-reconfigurable robot

A novel 3D module structure of modular self-reconfigurable robot was proposed, its detailed mechanism design principle and motion description method were introduced. Besides, a hierarchical motion planning method based on substructures was designed, in which one substructure was constructed by eight modules, and included a built-in motion sequences database for every module. A simulation experiment has been done based on this method and it proves that the method can reduce the search space of the planning, simplify the complexity with higher efficiency and it is feasible in the motion planning of a cluster structure of modules.