An Infrared Docking System for Modular Wheeled Mobile Robots

A modular wheeled mobile robot is composed of autonomous wheeled modules capable of selfassembling to form up a modular mobile robot. The robot can change the number of its modules by having the modules detach themselves from the main body and move independently. In this paper, we propose a docking system for such robots, including a connection mechanism and a docking guidance system. The connection mechanism includes reconnectable opponents which allow themodules to connect to and disconnect from one another. The infrared docking guidance system is used to steer the modules and keep them aligned until they are docked

Keywords:

Docking guidance , Connection mechanism , Wheeled mobile robots