Motion generation for a modular robot

The paper presents a modular robotic system, which is designed for reconfiguring, in order to achieve both walking and crawling motion. One module has 2 DOFs (rotations) and it can be connected to another one, by means of permanent magnets. A distributed control is accomplished, each module having its own controller and RF transmitter-receiver pair, for communication with the host computer. The experimentation of a four-legged structure and of an open chain one, developed with 6 modules, is presented.