Energy Consumption Estimation Model for Complete Coverage of a Tetromino Inspired Reconfigurable Surface Tiling Robot

Arunmozhi Manimuthu, Anh Vu Le, Rajesh Elara Mohan, Prabahar Veerajagadeshwar, Nguyen Huu Khanh Nhan and Ku Ping Cheng
Additional contact information
Arunmozhi Manimuthu: ROAR Lab, Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore
Anh Vu Le: ROAR Lab, Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore
Rajesh Elara Mohan: ROAR Lab, Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore
Prabahar Veerajagadeshwar: ROAR Lab, Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore
Nguyen Huu Khanh Nhan: Optoelectronics Research Group, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam
Ku Ping Cheng: ROAR Lab, Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: As autonomous tiling devices begin to perform floor cleaning, agriculture harvesting, surface painting tasks, with minimal or no human intervention, a new challenge arises: these devices also need to be energy efficient and be constantly aware of the energy expenditure during deployments. Typical approaches to this end are often limited to fixed morphology robots with little or no consideration for reconfiguring class of robots. The main contribution of the paper is an energy estimation scheme that allows estimating the energy consumption when a tetromino inspired reconfigurable floor tiling robot, hTetro moves from one configuration to another for completing the area covering task. To this end, the proposed model applying the Newton-Raphson algorithm in combination with Pulse width modulation (PWM)-H bridge to characterize the energy cost associated with locomotion gaits across all valid morphologies and identify optimal area coverage strategy among available options is presented. We validate our proposed approach using an 8’ × 8’ square testbed where there exist 12 possible solutions for complete area coverage however with varying levels of energy cost. Then, we implemented our approach to our hTetro platform and conducted experiments in a real-life environment. Experimental results demonstrate the application of our model in identifying the optimal area coverage strategy that has the least associated energy cost.

Keywords: tiling robotics; reconfigurable system; energy saving; area coverage; reconfigurable mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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