Modular reconfigurable robot module design, construction and control

This study presents a new experimental robot platform which opens the possibility of building nearly all types of robots with modular and reconfigurable points of view. In other words, a robot module, which is named OMNIMO, is created for this study and it is capable of constructing and realizing fundamental robot types which are swarm, mobile, manipulator type robots and their combinations. OMNIMO is a modular reconfigurable robot module which has four revolute and one prismatic active degree of freedom. The purpose of designing and producing of a robot is providing high single robot mobility and high multi module productivity requirements in modular reconfigurable robots. In this purpose, each robot module is equipped with controllers, actuators, sensing elements, a wireless communication unit, battery and complementary mechanical and electronic components. Degrees of freedom of a robot can be used as fixed, free and actuated. The robot module is designed in hybrid and homogeneous architecture to move completely autonomous in the three dimensional workspace. Due to the sophisticated mechanical design of OMNIMO, five different robot types can be realized with a single robot module. Also, it can dynamically change its own configuration between two different tasks. Moreover, by using multi robot modules together, so many different robot configurations can be realized. This paper presents details of the design, hardware implementation and production details of the original robot module OMNIMO and single module and multi module robot configurations.