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| | Polypod chain reconfiguration simulation. |
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Robots that use chain reconfiguration form serial chains (like your
average robot arm) and connect and reconnect many of these arms together by
forming a loops. Imagine forming a loop with your arms by clasping your
hands together and detaching your left arm at its shoulder. Now you've reconfigured
your two arms into one long arm like a chain robot might do.
Chain reconfiguration robots tend to be more easily applicable to standard robot tasks than lattice reconfiguration robots because the robots typically have modules that form arms like standard robots.
However, reconfiguration is much more difficult. It requires:
- docking (in up to 6 dimensions)
- inverse kinematics (with hyper-redundant (snake-like) robot arms)
- self-collision avoidance (how does an octopus keep from getting tangled up?)
There are a several groups with chain reconfiguration systems. You can find
them on the links page.
We have two systems.
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PolyBot
At PARC we have currently three generations of PolyBot. These have demonstrated
climbing, manipulation, manual as well as self-reconfiguration.
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Polypod
The precursor to PolyBot, Polypod represents work done at Stanford University
from 1992 - 1994 studying robot locomotion in general.
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Copyright (c) Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
Last updated Jan. 2002
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