RECCraft System: Towards Reliable and Efficient Collective Robotic Construction
Qiwei Xu, Yizheng Zhang, Shenghao Zhang, Rui Zhao, Zhuoxing Wu, Dongsheng Zhang, Cheng Zhou, Xiong Li
Abstract
This research presents a novel Collective Robotic Construction (CRC) system named RECCraft. The RECCraft hardware system is composed of the mobile manipulation vehicles, the cubic blocks, and the folding ramp blocks. Solid connection and easy removal of the blocks are achieved by an electropermanent magnet and silicon steel sheets. With one degree of freedom (DOF) lifting manipulator, the robot can carry a block 3.7 times its volume. An active folding ramp block can provide a robust passage to the upper level for the robot. Our study focuses on systemic improvement of the construction speed and reliability of the robotic construction system. Visual perception system realized by Apritag is adopted, featured by convenient deployment and high precision, to provide a reliable guarantee for robotic construction. RL-based planner provides end-to-end solution for planning tasks of building multi-layer constructions, which is validated by simulation platform and real prototype. Compared with construction speed of existing robotic construction systems, our proposed RECCraft system achieves state-of-the-art level. The robot builds a 2-layer construction by RL-based planner in 4 minutes and 16 seconds, which achieves construction volumetric throughput of 6.7×105 mm3/s.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2022_reccraftsystemto,
title = {RECCraft System: Towards Reliable and Efficient Collective Robotic Construction},
author = {Qiwei Xu and Yizheng Zhang and Shenghao Zhang and Rui Zhao and Zhuoxing Wu and Dongsheng Zhang and Cheng Zhou and Xiong Li and Jiahong Chen and Zengjun Zhao and Luyang Tang and Zhengyou Zhang and Lei Han},
booktitle = {IROS 2022},
year = {2022}
}