Computational issues in the planning and kinematics of binary robots

To meet the objectives of many future missions, robots will need to be adaptable and reconfigurable. A concept for such a robotic system has been proposed previously based on using a large number of simple binary actuators. Previous researchers have addressed some of the issues brought up by robots with a few binary actuators. This paper examines the computational feasibility of controlling and planning such binary robotic systems with a large number of actuators, including computation of their workspace, forward kinematics, inverse kinematics and trajectory following. Methods are proposed and evaluated by simulation. A detailed error analysis and computational requirements are presented. An example of the planning for a binary walking robot is presented.