NYI: Motion Planning and Optimal Design of Binary and Metamorphic Robotic Manipulators

9357738该奖项用于资助为期五年的美国国家科学基金会青年研究人员奖的第一年基本金额。研究目标由两个独立的项目组成。首先，将研究具有“二元执行机构”的机构的运动学、运动规划和设计。具有二元(开-关)致动器的机器人具有有限数量的状态。二元驱动机械手的主要优点是，它们可以在没有广泛反馈控制的情况下进行操作，任务重复性非常高，并且两状态执行器通常非常便宜，因此产生了用于工业用途的低成本机器人。第二，将研究在未知环境中使用的“变形”机器人系统的设计和协调。变形机器人是一组独立的模块，每个模块都具有在相邻模块上移动的能力。模块集合的形态作为集体运动的函数而改变。这种自我重新配置的能力潜在地赋予了变形机器人独特的能力。例如，模块可以“流”到固定形态机器人无法到达的缝隙中，或者生长成包裹物体的结构并形成稳定的抓取。

9357738 Chirikjian This award funds the first-year base amount of a five-year NSF Young Investigator Award. The research goals consist of two separate projects. First, the kinematics, motion planning, and design of mechanisms with `binary actuators' will be investigated. Robots with binary (on-off) actuators have a finite number of states. Major benefits of binary actuated manipulators are that they can be operated without extensive feedback control, task repeatability is very high, and two-state actuators are generally very inexpensive, thus resulting in low cost robots for industrial use. Second, the design and coordination of `metamorphic' robotic systems for use in unknown environments will be investigated. A metamorphic robot is a collection of independent modules each of which has the ability to locomote over adjacent modules. The morphology of the collection of modules changes as a function of the collective motion. Such self-reconfigurability potentially gives metamorphic robots unique abilities. For instance, modules can `flow' into crevasses unreachable by fixed morphology robots, or grow to form structures which envelop objects and form stable grasps.