A shape-shifting robot with changeable configurations can accomplish search and rescue tasks which could not be achieved by manpower sometimes. The accessibility of this robot to uneven environment was efficiently enlarged by changing its configuration. In this paper, a path planning method is presented that integrates the reconfigurable ability of the robot with the potential field law. An adaptive genetic algorithm is applied to solve effectively the local minimum problem. The experiments show that the robot’s configurations can be changed to perform the path planning with the environmental variation. Moreover, the path has been shortened effectively.
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