Affine Transformable Unmanned Ground Vehicle

This paper develops the proof of concept for a novel affine transformable unmanned ground vehicle (ATUGV) with the capability of safe and aggressive deformation while carrying multiple payloads. The ATUGV is a multi-body system with mobile robots that can be used to power the ATUGV morphable motion, powered cells to enclose the mobile robots, unpowered cells to contain payloads, and a deformable structure to integrate cells through bars and joints. The objective is that all powered and unpowered cells motion can safely track a desired affine transformation, where an affine transformation can be decomposed into translation, rigid body rotation, and deformation. To this end, the paper first uses a deep neural network to structure cell interconnection in such a way that every cell can freely move over the deformation plane, and the entire structure can reconfigurably deform to track a desired affine transformation. Then, the mobile robots, contained by the powered cells and stepper motors, regulating the connections of the powered and unpowered cells, design the proper controls so that all cells safely track the desired affine transformation. The functionality of the proposed ATUGV is validated through hardware experimentation and simulation.