Through the implementation of reconfigurability to
achieve flexibility and adaptation to tasks by morphology changes
rather than by increasing the number of joints, malleable robots
present advantages over traditional serial robot arms in regards
to reduced weight, size, and cost. While limited in degrees of
freedom (DOF), malleable robots still provide versatility across
operations typically served by systems using higher DOF than
required by the tasks. In this paper, we present the creation
of a 2-DOF malleable robot, detailing the design of joints
and malleable link, along with its modelling through forward
and inverse kinematics, and a reconfiguration methodology that
informs morphology changes based on end effector location—
determining how the user should reshape the robot to enable
a task previously unattainable. The recalibration and motion
planning for making robot motion possible after reconfiguration
are also discussed, and thorough experiments with the prototype
to evaluate accuracy and reliability of the system are presented.
Results validate the approach and pave the way for further
research in the area