Development of novel robots with modular methodology

Abstract

Modules have been widely used in the development of re-configurable robots and snake-like robots. Modular methodology can also be applied in design of other robots. To build robots flexibly and quickly with low costs, we have developed two basic joint modules and several functional modules including grippers, suckers and wheels/feet as end-effectors. In this paper, we introduce the development of these modules, and present several novel robots built using them. Specifically, we show how to use them to set up a manipulator, a 6-DoF biped walking robot, a wheeled mobile robot, a biped tree-climbing robot, and a biped wall-climbing robot. It has been shown that a few modules can easily spawn a variety of novel robots with modular methodology.