RhoMorph: Rhombus-shaped Deformable Modular Robots for Stable, Medium-Independent Reconfiguration Motion

TL;DR

RhoMorph introduces a rhombus-shaped modular robot that enables stable, medium-independent reconfiguration through minimal control, featuring a novel motion primitive and validated by physical experiments.

Contribution

The paper presents RhoMorph, a new deformable modular robot with a unique rhombus shape and a novel motion primitive for stable, medium-independent reconfiguration.

Findings

Successful physical reconfiguration experiments

High positional and docking accuracy

Stable morphing in diverse environments

Abstract

In this paper, we present RhoMorph, a novel deformable planar lattice modular self-reconfigurable robot (MSRR) with a rhombus shaped module. Each module consists of a parallelogram skeleton with a single centrally mounted actuator that enables folding and unfolding along its diagonal. The core design philosophy is to achieve essential MSRR functionalities such as morphing, docking, and locomotion with minimal control complexity. This enables a continuous and stable reconfiguration process that is independent of the surrounding medium, allowing the system to reliably form various configurations in diverse environments. To leverage the unique kinematics of RhoMorph, we introduce morphpivoting, a novel motion primitive for reconfiguration that differs from advanced MSRR systems, and propose a strategy for its continuous execution. Finally, a series of physical experiments validate the module's stable reconfiguration ability, as well as its positional and docking accuracy.