Collision-Free Reconfiguration Planning for Variable Topology Trusses Using a Linking Invariant

Alexander Spinos; Mark Yim

IROS 2023poster2 citations

Collision-Free Reconfiguration Planning for Variable Topology Trusses Using a Linking Invariant

Abstract

We introduce a multi-modal reconfiguration planner for the Variable Topology Truss (VTT) modular robot system. The VTT system is a truss-architecture modular self-reconfigurable robot. When a VTT is restricted to a single topology, the collision constraints between the truss members divide the configuration space into many connected components, which makes collision-free planning difficult. This new planner leverages a mathematical invariant based on link theory to find topological reconfiguration actions that can connect these different regions and make progress towards a goal. We show that this planner is effective at finding paths between configurations with different truss topologies.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{iros2023_collisionfreerec,
  title = {Collision-Free Reconfiguration Planning for Variable Topology Trusses Using a Linking Invariant},
  author = {Alexander Spinos and Mark Yim},
  booktitle = {IROS 2023},
  year = {2023}
}