Modeling and Assessing of Self-Reconfigurable Cleaning Robot hTetro Based on Energy Consumption

The autonomous floor-cleaning self-reconfigurable robots have entered into the practical stage by establishing enhanced area coverage over the fixed morphology counterparts. Energy consumption during the self-reconfiguration, i.e., changing the shape of the robot from one form to another, becomes a primary focus in these robots that carry finite energy sources. In this paper, hTetro platform with two hinge dissections namely, Left–Left–Left (LLL) and Left–Left–Right (LLR) are modeled and assessed for the energy consumption during the reconfiguration. The geometry of the two dissections, its workspaces, and the set of inverse kinematics solutions for the seven forms are presented. The inverse dynamics using the Newton–Euler approach was adopted to calculate the wrench, i.e., forces and moments at the hinge joints, and subsequently assess the power consumed during the reconfigurations of two hinge dissections in the simulation. Extensive experiments were performed across the two assembled platforms to estimate the power consumption by logging the current data. The comparison was made with the simulation results. The results are particularly useful in the selection of reconfiguration with minimal energy consumption during the floor cleaning.