This paper presents an object manipulation strategy for the Variable Topology Truss (VTT) system, a truss robot that comprises actuated truss members connected by passive spherical joints. Although truss robots were originally proposed as rapidly deployable manipulators, manipulation strategy has not been studied thoroughly. To enable manipulation, we introduce a hybrid control framework that regulates position and force concurrently without explicit decoupling. At the actuator level, each member employs a sensor-based force feedback controller to generate the desired axial forces despite high actuator friction. At the task level, the forces applied at the end-effector nodes are produced by computing the required member forces using a static model of the VTT. We evaluate force-tracking performance through experiments on both a single member module and the full VTT system. Finally, we demonstrate object manipulation using two representative configurations and quantitatively assess combined position and force tracking performance. Experimental results confirm that the proposed approach enables consistent and reliable object manipulation with the VTT system.
Exploring environment exploitation for self-reconfiguration in modular robotics
Department of Applied Mathematics University of Washington（应用数学系 华盛顿大学）；Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics University of Pennsylvania（机械工程与应用力学系 费城大学）；Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Nevada, Las Vegas（机械工程系 内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校）
DeformGen: Dynamics-Based Topology Augmentation for Deformable Manipulation Policy Learning
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo（宁波东方理工大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（香港理工大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Zhongguancun Academy（中关村学院）；Microsoft Research（微软研究院）
