Research on hardware design and self-reconfiguration planning of self-reconfigurable robot

A novel homogeneous cubic 3-D lattice module structure of self-reconfigurable robot with a single rotation DOF (degree of freedom) is designed. It can form stable space-filling structure and achieve many modes of reconfiguration and locomotion. The detailed mechanism principle and configuration representation with motion description are introduced. A centralized hierarchical reconfiguration planning method based on cubic meta-module is presented. Each meta-module is constructed by eight modules with build-in motion sequences database. Simulation experiment demonstrates that this method can reduce the search space of the planning and has less complexity and higher efficiency. It is feasible for the self-reconfiguration planning of a cluster structure of modules.