Abstract: The complicated work configurations of reconfigurable robots make it quite difficult to solve the problem of inverse kinematics, which directly affects the real time control and application of reconfigurable robots. In this paper, a new modular modeling method is proposed, and by using this new method, the kinematical model for a robot can be built immediately. This is a method that decomposes the work configurations of a robot at the target position into finite configuration planes, and by describing the workspace of these configuration planes, the orientations and positions of these planes can be matched to find the numerical solutions to a robot. The applicability of this method is proved through the kinematical simulation of an eight DOF robot built using elementary modules.

Key words: modular robot, reconfigurable robot, inverse kinematics, configuration plane