Morphology Extension Kit: A Modular Robotic Platform for Physically Reconfigurable Wearables

Various forms of wearable robotics challenge the notion of the human body, in that the robots render the acquired capabilities in physical forms. However, majority of such systems are designed for specific purposes, where rapidly changing environments pose a diverse set of problems that are difficult to solve with a single interface. To address this, we propose a modular hardware platform that allows its users or designers to build and customize wearable robots. The process of building an augmentation is simply to connect actuator and sensor blocks and attach them to the body. The current list of designed components includes servomotor modules and sensor modules, that can be programmed to incorporate additional electronics for desired sensing capabilities. Our electrical and mechanical connector designs can be extended to utilize any motors within afforded power, size, and weight constraints. We also show how our platform can be used in various applications, in addition to how the proposed design can be extended as well as challenges for future systems.