The Modboat is an autonomous surface robot that turns the oscillation of a single motor into a controlled paddling motion through passive flippers. Inertial control methods developed in prior work can successfully drive the Modboat along trajectories and enable docking to neighboring modules, but have a non-constant cycle time and cannot react to dynamic environments. In this work we present a thrust direction control method for the Modboat that significantly improves the time-response of the system and increases the accuracy with which it can be controlled. We experimentally demonstrate that this method can be used to perform more compact maneuvers than prior methods or comparable robots can. We also present an extension to the controller that solves the reaction wheel problem of unbounded actuator velocity, and show that it further improves performance.

翻译：Modboat 是一个自主的表面机器人,它把一个发动机的振动通过被动的拖动器转换成一个受控的划桨运动。在先前工作中开发的惰性控制方法可以成功地沿着轨迹驱动摩多艇,并能够与相邻的模块对接,但具有非恒定循环时间,无法对动态环境作出反应。在这项工作中,我们为Modboat 提出了一个推力方向控制方法,该方法大大改进了系统的时间反应,提高了控制它的精确度。我们实验性地证明,这一方法可以比以前的方法或可比的机器人使用更多的紧凑动作。我们还向能够解决无绑定动作速度反应轮问题的控制器提供了扩展,并表明它能够进一步改善性能。