Unified Modeling of Unconventional Modular and Reconfigurable Manipulation System
This work addresses the need for adaptable modular assembly and software interfaces in robotics, offering a solution for designing and controlling unconventional manipulators, though it appears incremental as it builds upon existing modular concepts with new modules and software integration.
The paper tackled the problem of customizing manipulator configurations by introducing 3D printable, lightweight unconventional modules (MOIRs' Mark-2) to enable the development of any custom n-DoF serial manipulator, including non-parallel and non-perpendicular jointed configurations, and demonstrated this through automatic modeling and control in a vertical farm setup.
Customization of manipulator configurations using modularity and reconfigurability aspects is receiving much attention. Modules presented so far in literature deals with the conventional and standard configurations. This paper presents the 3D printable, light-weight and unconventional modules: MOIRs' Mark-2, to develop any custom `n'-Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) serial manipulator even with the non-parallel and non-perpendicular jointed configuration. These unconventional designs of modular configurations seek an easy adaptable solution for both modular assembly and software interfaces for automatic modeling and control. A strategy of assembling the modules, automatic and unified modeling of the modular and reconfigurable manipulators with unconventional parameters is proposed in this paper using the proposed 4 modular units. A reconfigurable software architecture is presented for the automatic generation of kinematic and dynamic models and configuration files, through which, a designer can design, validate using visualization, plan and execute the motion of the developed configuration as required. The framework developed is based upon an open source platform called as Robot Operating System (ROS), which acts as a digital twin for the modular configurations. For the experimental demonstration, a 3D printed modular library is developed and an unconventional configuration is assembled, using the proposed modules followed by automatic modeling and control, for a single cell of the vertical farm setup.