Research and design of rigid docking mechanism applied on field modular self-reconfigurable robot system

Rigid docking is important for field modular self-reconfigurable robot system, and 6-dimension position/orientation offset should be conquered during alignment. This paper builds geometric constraint model of fundamental aligning methods and defines a 2-element state vector to evaluate position/orientation offset. Then, a 3-DOF hybrid rigid docking mechanism is introduced to achieve rigid docking in rugged terrain. This paper also gives out its maximum allowable offset. Based on this solution, Jl-2 prototype rigid docking mechanism is developed and tested. Following experiments shows that this docking mechanism is suitable for rigid docking of field modular self-reconfigurable robots in rugged terrain.