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Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems pp 1–15Cite as

Distributed Tunneling Reconfiguration of Sliding Cubic Modular Robots in Severe Space Requirements

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Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics ((SPAR,volume 9))

Abstract

This paper studies a tunneling-based reconfiguration algorithm for cubic modular robots. Tunneling based reconfigurations have advantages in severe space requirements. This is because a tunneling modular robot only uses spaces occupied by the start and goal configurations. However, previously proposed methods have a limitation on the arrangement of start and goal configurations, in which the overlapped part between the start and goal configurations must be connected. We propose a tunneling reconfiguration algorithm that removes the limitation and is available for cases with multi-overlapped parts between the start and goal configurations. The proposed algorithm uses a three-dimensional 2 × 2 × 2 meta-module to maintain the connectivity and mobility of the robot structure. We implement the algorithm in a distributed form. We prove the completeness of the proposed reconfiguration algorithm for assumed robot structures. We examine the proposed tunneling algorithm by simulation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. NTT Corporation, Kanagawa, 2430198, Japan

    Hiroshi Kawano

Authors
  1. Hiroshi Kawano
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Correspondence to Hiroshi Kawano .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Nikolaus Correll

  2. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Mac Schwager

  3. Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Michael Otte

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Kawano, H. (2019). Distributed Tunneling Reconfiguration of Sliding Cubic Modular Robots in Severe Space Requirements. In: Correll, N., Schwager, M., Otte, M. (eds) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05816-6_1

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