A wheel-arm reconfigurable mobile robot design and its reconfigurable configuration

Reconfigurable robots for multi-robot cooperation or reconfiguration can cope with challenging tasks such as planetary exploration or disaster search. They help reduce cost and difficulties of developing a single for each task. Based upon the concept of reconfigurability, a novel wheel-arm mobile robot system is designed. It consists of a chassis with two parallel driving wheels, a robot arm with four degrees of freedom (DOF), a single DOF gripper and an assistant wheel between the arm and gripper, and an interface for reconfiguration at the gripper and the chassis end. Locomotion and manipulation analysis and simulation of this robot are described. A configuration expression method describing robot modules condition in space and their reconfiguration relationship for multi-robot reconfiguration or cooperation is put forward, and a fuzzy algorithm for task-based configuration planning and selection is presented and validated by simulation.