A rapidly deployable manipulator system combines the flexibility of reconfigurable modular hardware with modular programming tools, allowing the user to rapidly create and program a manipulator, which is custom-tailored for a given task. This article describes the main building blocks of such a system: a reconfigurable modular manipulator system (RMMS), modular and reusable control software, and a novel agent-based approach to task-based design of modular manipulators.
['Christiaan J. J. Paredis', 'H. Benjamin Brown', 'Pradeep K. Khosla']
A rapidly deployable manipulator system