Distributed Operation Health Monitoring for Modular and Reconfigurable Robot With Consideration of Actuation Limitation

A distributed operation health monitoring (OHM) method of modular and reconfigurable robot (MRR) is presented in this paper. The proposed method is shown to be able to monitor the health of each MRR joint module based on the deviation of the actuator output from what is commanded. Driven by the desire of avoiding the need of joint acceleration measurement, a novel health indicator that reflects the operation health of an MRR module is developed by filtering the commanded joint torque generated by the joint controller and comparing it with a filtered torque estimate derived from the dynamic model of MRR. The proposed approach can work effectively for MRR modules in any working mode, including stationary state. The proposed scheme has been evaluated experimentally, and the results demonstrate its efficacy.