Title
Material-Robot System For Assembly Of Discrete Cellular Structures
Abstract
We present a material-robot system consisting of mobile robots that can assemble discrete cellular structures. We detail themanufacturing of cuboctahedral unit cells, termed voxels, which passively connect to neighboring voxels with magnets. We then describe "relative" robots that can locomote on, transport, and place voxels. These robots are designed relative to and in coordination with the cellular structure-the geometry of the voxel informs the robot's global geometric configuration, local mechanisms, and end effectors, and robotic assembly features are designed into the voxels. We describe control strategies for determining build sequence, robot path planning, discretemotion control, and feedback, integrated within a custom software environment for simulating and executing a single or multi-robot construction. We use this material-robot system to build several types of structures, such as one-dimensional (1-D) beams, 2-D plates, and 3-D enclosures. The robots can navigate and assemble structures with minimal feedback, relying on voxel-sized resolution to achieve successful global positioning. We show a multi-robot assembly to increase the throughput and expand system capability using a deterministic centralized control strategy.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/LRA.2019.2930486
IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS
Keywords
Field
DocType
Assembly, space robotics and automation, path planning for multiple mobile robots or agents
Voxel,Motion control,Custom software,Robot end effector,Control engineering,Global Positioning System,Throughput,Engineering,Robot,Mobile robot,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
4
4
2377-3766
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Benjamin Jenett111.36
Amira Abdel-Rahman211.36
Kenneth C. Cheung3102.23
Neil Gershenfeld4471213.47