ROOMBOTS—MODULAR ROBOTS FOR ADAPTIVE FURNITURE

Autonomous mobile robot navigation has generated a lot of interest among researchers in recent years. Herein, we outline the design of a four-tracked autonomous mobile robot with a main-controller regulated on the basis of a PIC microcontroller and Bluetooth. For navigation, the system includes a 3D accelerometer sensor and a Bluetooth module. The accelerometer helps improve navigation accuracy and performance to a very large extent in an autonomous mobile robot. Further, this accelerometer installed in the robot assists in detecting vibration, the presence of a slope, obstacle or any other object in its path, and for calculating the angle of the slope. The data collected by the accelerometer are sent to mobile through Bluetooth wireless communication. This article presents the framework of the robot as building blocks of future furniture, and as the robot moves by self–reconfiguration, it is called roombots. Self-reconfiguration planning is a vital action that helps alter shape in an autonomous manner. For such planning, we put forward a new scheme that involves graph signature and graph edit distance. For establishing a hardware framework, an active connection system on the basis of physical latches has been proposed. In addition, task-dependent design limitations that might creep into the designing of future Roombot modules have been deliberated. Further, this study displays interest in adaptive furniture behavior, as well as online learning of locomotion patterns, for further applications of roombots