Resumen de A heterogeneous modular robotic system towards the execution of cooperative tasks
Over the past decades, the field of robotics has spread to new areas of study beyond highly structured processes of industry. It has been creating new fields of robotics, such as, mobile robotics, humanoid robotics, domestic robotics, underwater robotics, medical robotics, robotics for rehabilitation, robotic assistants, aerial robotics, cooperative robotics, etc. These robotic fields challenge complex and unstructured environments.
Nevertheless, certain aspects of classical robotics are still considered during the design process, that is, the designer proposes an optimal design for a robot structure with constant kinematic parameters resulting in a single robot configuration highly efficient for a specific task. Despite the advantages that show this type of robotic system, it has several disadvantages, such as, the long development time, high initial costs, power requirements and most of them are designed for a specific mission or task.
Unfortunately, there are many real applications where it is complicated to design a robot that meets all the requirements for the environment and the task execution. Therefore, modular robotic systems have emerged as a solution to these types of challenges. Modular systems attempt to bring benefits such as versatility, robustness and low-cost fabrication over conventional fixed-parameter design.
This research work, entitled '' A Heterogeneous Modular Robotic System Towards the Execution of Cooperative Tasks", encompasses several topics related to hardware design, coordination algorithms and cooperative task execution. This work extends the use of modular robotic systems and their research progress to real-world applications such as teleoperation and the execution of cooperative tasks.
The thesis describes the conceptualization of a heterogeneous modular robotic system, its mechanical design and hardware development. The assembly of different robot configurations demonstrates the system's versatility, and the execution of manipulation and locomotion tasks demonstrates its performance. Also, the requirements that satisfy a standard connector mechanism for a heterogeneous modular robotic system are described in such manner that they can be considered for future modular system approaches.
Moreover, the necessity of controlling modular robot configurations in an easy manner leads to the development of modalities or features that facilitate the execution of teleoperated tasks. These features are described and integrated into a graphical user interface during operation.
Finally, specific coordination strategies that allow the execution of cooperative tasks with modular robotic systems are presented. The implementation of these strategies into the system permits the execution of cooperative tasks with a colony of modular robot configurations. Through several experiments, it is demonstrated that a modular robot configuration can successfully perform different locomotion types, object manipulation and cooperative tasks just as well as standard robots can.
A general conclusion of this thesis is modular robotic systems can be used as an alternative for service robotics, however, the concept of the system allows its integration and use in different areas of modern robotics. The heterogeneity in the system design creates a more practical and low-cost fabrication modular robotic system which includes a number of general-purpose and special-purpose module types, all designed with the anticipated range of tasks and configurations in mind. The modules' design must be kept relevant to the problem and maintained at appropriate level. The heterogeneity in modular robotic systems can be an advantageous property as long as it is properly utilized.
