ReBot: A Novel Under-Actuated Resilient Robot

Abstract

A resilient robot can recover its original function after a partial damage. In this paper, a novel under-actuated resilient robot named ReBot is presented. ReBot is an under-actuated robotic system and it consists of one type of module, which realizes the under-actuated characteristic with the whole robot. In ReBot, the module is designed as a cube structure with two rotational DOFs. The module is designed such that one can connect to another with the function of self-locking and switching between an active and a passive connection. The evolution of the configuration of an entire robotic system is performed autonomously. A preliminary experiment is carried out to show that the design requirement can be achieved.