Multi-drive control for in-pipe snakelike heterogeneous modular micro-robots

Abstract

Heterogeneous modular robots are a subject of great complexity due to the control problems derived from the different characteristics of each of the modules and the interactions amongst them. In this article, a control structure based on behaviors for robots composed of different drive units and other purpose modules is presented. This article mainly presents an heterogeneous control layer to allow a transparent control of the robot no matter how it is configured. This development is aimed to chain-type robots and focused on pipe inspection and exploration tasks.