ReQuBiS -- Reconfigurable Quadrupedal-Bipedal Snake Robots
This addresses the need for versatile robots in varied environments, but it is incremental as it builds on existing reconfigurable robot concepts with a simplified mechanism.
The authors tackled the problem of robot mobility trade-offs by designing ReQuBiS, a reconfigurable robot that transforms between snake, quadruped, and biped modes without rearranging modules, enabling capabilities like splitting into two agents for parallel tasks.
The selection of mobility modes for robot navigation consists of various trade-offs. Snake robots are ideal for traversing through constrained environments such as pipes, cluttered and rough terrain, whereas bipedal robots are more suited for structured environments such as stairs. Finally, quadruped robots are more stable than bipeds and can carry larger payloads than snakes and bipeds but struggle to navigate soft soil, sand, ice, and constrained environments. A reconfigurable robot can achieve the best of all worlds. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art reconfigurable robots rely on the rearrangement of modules through complicated mechanisms to dissemble and assemble at different places, increasing the size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements. We propose Reconfigurable Quadrupedal-Bipedal Snake Robots (ReQuBiS), which can transform between mobility modes without rearranging modules. Hence, requiring just a single modification mechanism. Furthermore, our design allows the robot to split into two agents to perform tasks in parallel for biped and snake mobility. Experimental results demonstrate these mobility capabilities in snake, quadruped, and biped modes and transitions between them.