Motion Planning for Variable Topology Trusses: Reconfiguration and Locomotion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel motion planning framework for variable topology truss robots that enables efficient reconfiguration and locomotion by addressing their complex, high-dimensional, and self-collision-prone motion constraints.

Contribution

The paper presents a new motion planning approach specifically designed for VTT robots, allowing for structural reconfiguration and improved locomotion efficiency.

Findings

Effective reconfiguration demonstrated in test scenarios

Significant improvement in locomotion efficiency

Framework handles high-dimensional, complex constraints

Abstract

Truss robots are highly redundant parallel robotic systems that can be applied in a variety of scenarios. The variable topology truss (VTT) is a class of modular truss robots. As self-reconfigurable modular robots, a VTT is composed of many edge modules that can be rearranged into various structures depending on the task. These robots change their shape by not only controlling joint positions as with fixed morphology robots, but also reconfiguring the connectivity between truss members in order to change their topology. The motion planning problem for VTT robots is difficult due to their varying morphology, high dimensionality, the high likelihood for self-collision, and complex motion constraints. In this paper, a new motion planning framework to dramatically alter the structure of a VTT is presented. It can also be used to solve locomotion tasks that are much more efficient compared with previous work. Several test scenarios are used to show its effectiveness. Supplementary materials are available at https://www.modlabupenn.org/vtt-motion-planning/.