On-the-Fly Control Design of Modular Robot Manipulators

We consider the problem of automatically designing model-based controllers of modular robot manipulators in a systematic way. Modular robots are especially useful in flexible manufacturing, where one wishes to quickly assemble robots from a set of modules for temporary tasks. The evaluation of all possible dynamical models is typically impractical, undermining the implementation of model-based control laws. Contrary to most other work that approached this challenge by designing decentralized controllers, we generate on-the-fly model-based centralized controllers after a new robot has been assembled. In this brief, we extend the applicability of our previous work on this subject by considering both link and joint modules, assembly dependent friction effects, and we finally present experiments that validate the overall approach.