proposal writing
Focus
Implementing a generalized control and planning output for arbitrary folded robots designs generated by a computational design framework
Approach
I am looking at papers that are focusing on generating the kinematic and dynamic model of robots with modular components (most of which are articulated manipulator arms) and also looking at how WMRs are modeled. I will see if there is a way to generalize or merge these two approaches in order to be able to generate a dynamic models of parts currently generated by RoCo (many of which are WMRs). The resulting model would then be used to generate a controller, which can be tested against a model-free PD controller for the given robot.
Papers and books I am reading closely
I was mostly looking at papers modeling modular robots and WMRs. Most foldable robot papers were modeling the kinematics of the origami mechanisms itself, which is also v interesting but not the exact focus of this particular project. A lot of papers looking at modeling modular reconfigurable robots had modules which had actuators embedded in them and were homogeneous.
[[@giustiAutomaticCentralizedController2015]] A. Giusti and M. Althoff, “Automatic centralized controller design for modular and reconfigurable robot manipulators,” in 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Sep. 2015, pp. 3268–3275. doi: 10.1109/IROS.2015.7353831.
- Their automatic controller design is generalized, can be applied to heterogeneous modules. This paper was cited by quite a few papers working on generating controllers for reconfigurable modular robots as well. They are also distributing kinematic and dynamic information to the modules to enable making a centralized model-based controller
[[@campionStructuralPropertiesClassification1996]] G. Campion, G. Bastin, and B. Dandrea-Novel, “Structural properties and classification of kinematic and dynamic models of wheeled mobile robots,” IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 47–62, Feb. 1996, doi: 10.1109/70.481750.
- This is an old paper that discusses the different approaches to modeling WMRs
[[@sicilianoRobotics2009]] B. Siciliano, L. Sciavicco, L. Villani, and G. Oriolo, Robotics. London: Springer London, 2009. doi: 10.1007/978-1-84628-642-1.
- I will be referring to this to study about how to model the kinematics and dynamics of manipulators and WMRs
[[@haComputationalDesignRobotic2018]] S. Ha, S. Coros, A. Alspach, J. M. Bern, J. Kim, and K. Yamane, “Computational Design of Robotic Devices From High-Level Motion Specifications,” IEEE Trans. Robot., vol. 34, no. 5, pp. 1240–1251, Oct. 2018, doi: 10.1109/TRO.2018.2830419.
- This paper takes as input a library of modular components, as well as basic rules that define compatible connections between them, as well a motion task (which would be motion trajectories for the end-effectors),and then optimizes the robot design - the morphology, not just the parameters, using a graph -search heuristic. It aims to find the simplest robot design that can successfully execute user-provided motions.
I'm working on polishing up the literature review and will keep adding as I read more.