Self-Reconfigurable Robots: An Introduction

Citation

Zoppi, M. (2011), "Self-Reconfigurable Robots: An Introduction", Industrial Robot, Vol. 38 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2011.04938daa.015

Self-Reconfigurable Robots: An Introduction

Self-Reconfigurable Robots: An Introduction

Article Type: Book review From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 38, Issue 4

Kasper Stoy, David Brandt and David J. ChristensenMIT PressCambridge, MA2010$35.00244 pp.ISBN: 978-0-262-01371-0web link: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12151

The book fulfills well the purpose stated in the preface: to serve as an introduction to reconfigurable robots especially targeted to students and beginner researchers of the area.

The Chapter 1 is a short but sound introduction to the matter with a review of the state of the art of reconfigurable robots. The “further reading” section gives good hints.

Mechanical and control design solutions are detailed in the subsequent sections of the book, which are generally based on the presentation and discussion of significant development cases with no attempt to propose general methods or theories. This is clear in the organization of the chapters on “design”. Chapter 2 reports some very basic good-sense considerations and some basic terminology. Chapter 3 on mechanical design is quite superficial too, limited to the presentation of robot architectures and to the review of actuation and interfacing solutions used in existing robots. Chapter 4 on the electrical design is similarly introductory and even more generic. These chapters seem due to complete the book, but not in the main interest of the authors. I found a step improvement in the quality and completeness of the presentation after Chapter 5. The self-reconfiguration problem is presented and discussed quite well with several examples and good further reading suggestions. The discussion is on two-dimensional robots. Configuration representation is introduced. Planning is discussed as a search problem and as a control problem highlighting quite well the advantages of both approaches. How to take into account task and environment constraints and requirements is discussed in Chapter 8, completing the overview on planning.

The book is completed, in Chapter 9, by a short discussion of the operation of a reconfigurable robot at fixed configuration. The focus is on locomotion with a final section on manipulation. The parallelism between the physics of the robot (its current architecture) and the architecture of the control is clearly stated, again without pretending to present the matter systematically.

The final chapter on “research challenges” is more properly a conclusive summary of the intrinsic advantages of reconfigurability to adapt to environment and tasks. It would not inspire an expert with new ideas, but it is a good conclusion of this overview and introduction to reconfigurable robots.

Matteo ZoppiDIMEC – University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy