Coordinated Planning and Visualization for an Electromagnetically Actuated Reconfigurable Robot

Abstract

Self-reconfigurable modular robots present the promise of a fully functional system that can reassemble itself into arbitrary shapes and sizes. One such robot that could be used for this is a cubic block equipped with electromagnets for propulsion and a microcontroller for communication.

This thesis presents an interface that can be used to facilitate multi-cube movement planning. An interactive 3D web simulation is built to visualize an arbitrary number of cubes and consecutive rotations. The simulation tracks how each cube’s orientation and positions of electromagnets changes over time. This proves useful when programming movements in physical cube prototypes and allows more complex assemblies to be coordinated. The functionality of the simulation has been validated with actual successful experiments on an air table and experiments in microgravity on a parabolic flight campaign.