Infrared positioning and docking in self-reconfigurable microrobots

A positioning and docking method in self-reconfiguration based on infrared sensors for mobile type of robots is presented. In the process, a still robot is regarded as a beacon, while a moving robot driving itself toward it with infrared sensors for localization and completes the docking process. Two infrared sensors on top of the front-end attachment of the moving robot are rotated by two stepper motors and the infrared ray emitted are reflected respectively by the two reflectors on top of the back-end attachment of the beacon robot. The four angles of rotation obtained from the two stepper motors, two for each motor, are the input to a triangulation procedure that evaluates the position and orientation of the moving robot relative to the beacon robot. Then the trajectory generation and tracking enable the moving robot to dock with the beacon robot. A prototype system has been constructed, and experiments showed the feasibility of the method.