A novel distributed meta-module motion design for modular robotic systems based on grid partition method

This article studies a meta-module motion design approach for homogenous modular robotic systems in self-configuration. By utilizing configuration diversity, scalability and unit-substitutability, homogenous modular robotic systems can be a promising approach to life detection and space exploration in the future. Based on the requirements of the potential applications, self-configuration can be considered as the precondition. As similar to swarm robotic systems, the distributed control strategy in which the modular robots are operated in a sequence of motion circles consist of 'detection'- 'decision'- 'execution' is of great significance. However, there is a limitation to the applicability of previously proposed work on the self-configuration topic, due to the fact that the self-configuration strategy execution suffers from the motion constraints of modular robots. In order to solve the problem, we propose a grid partition method that removes the gap between the locomotion of a single modular robot and the reconfiguration of the whole system. Under the analysis of the grid partition, the meta-module motion design is proposed to realize the distributed self-configuration strategy. We simulated the self-configuration in M-Lattice, a two-dimensional homogenous modular robotic system.