Design, Fabrication, and Control Algorithm of Self-Reconfigurable Modular Intelligent Vehicles

Abstract

Self-reconfigurable vehicles are able to transform into new formations on the basis of mutual communication and positioning so as to adapt to a new environment and new tasks. Compared with fixed-formation vehicles, reconfigurable vehicles feature multifunction and high reliability. First, a modular vehicle with a Mecanum wheel is designed, and a motion control method of a modular vehicle is derived through the establishment and analysis of its kinematics model. Afterwards, a visual positioning system based on AprilTag is designed, and the reconfiguration experiment of modular vehicles is completed in order to validate the feasibility of the proposed control method. A hardware control platform is built, which is able to realize the omnidirectional movement of the vehicle in the plane. The proposed modular vehicles with the corresponding control method successfully completes centralized perception, trajectory planning, and self-reconfiguration, which can be potentially applied in various scenarios, such as orientation guidance and logistics handling.