{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,21]],"date-time":"2025-02-21T19:42:15Z","timestamp":1740166935574,"version":"3.37.3"},"reference-count":37,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,20]],"date-time":"2024-05-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1716163200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000185","name":"Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["FA8100-19-P-0022"],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000185","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Robotics"],"abstract":"This paper presents the path planning and motion control of a self-reconfigurable mobile robot system, focusing on module-to-module autonomous docking and alignment tasks. STORM, which stands for Self-configurable and Transformable Omni-Directional Robotic Modules, features a unique mode-switching ability and novel docking mechanism design. This enables the modules that make up STORM to dock with each other and form a variety configurations in or to perform a large array of tasks. The path planning and motion control presented here consists of two parallel schemes. A Lyapunov function-based precision controller is proposed to align the target docking mechanisms in a small range of the target position. Then, an optimization-based path planning algorithm is proposed to help find the fastest path and determine when to switch its locomotion mode in a much larger range. Both numerical simulations and real-world experiments were carried out to validate these proposed controllers.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/robotics13050081","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,21]],"date-time":"2024-05-21T07:26:27Z","timestamp":1716276387000},"page":"81","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Autonomous Alignment and Docking Control for a Self-Reconfigurable Modular Mobile Robotic System"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4904-3661","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shumin","family":"Feng","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4926-5109","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yujiong","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA"}]},{"given":"Isaac","family":"Pressgrove","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9452-482X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pinhas","family":"Ben-Tzvi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"321","DOI":"10.1016\/0921-8890(95)00053-4","article-title":"Issues and approaches in the design of collective autonomous agents","volume":"16","year":"1995","journal-title":"Robot. 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