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A Stochastic Self-reconfigurable Modular Robot with Mobility Control

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Advances in Autonomous Robotics (TAROS 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7429))

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Abstract

Recently, a variety of robotic systems have been studied under the umbrella term of modular reconfigurable robotics [7,6]. Unlike conventional fixedmorphology robots, whose performance is usually confined by the operating environment and their own size, modular reconfigurable robots have the potential advantage of being able to change their morphology by rearranging the connectivity of their modular units [3]. This project investigates the development and improvement of a self-reconfigurable modular robot designed in previous work to study the emergence of robotic life-forms in a controllable physical environment [4]. The system contains 7 cm x 7 cm square robot units. Each unit is externally propelled and moves stochastically on an air table [2,1]. Each unit can establish, and break, up to four physical connections with other units by means of swiveling permanent magnets [4,1]. Connected units can communicate using infra-red transceivers.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Robotics Lab, Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Runxiao Ding, Paul Eastwood & Roderich Groß

  2. LSRO, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Francesco Mondada

Authors
  1. Runxiao Ding
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  2. Paul Eastwood
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  3. Francesco Mondada
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  4. Roderich Groß
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Guido Herrmann

  2. Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab Faculty of Computing, Engineering & Mathematical Sciences, University of the West of England, BS16 1QY, Bristol, U.K.

    Matthew Studley

  3. University of the West of England, BS34 8QZ, Bristol, UK

    Martin Pearson , Andrew Conn  & Chris Melhuish ,  & 

  4. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, SW7 2BT, London, UK

    Mark Witkowski

  5. Robot Intelligence Technology Laboratory, Department of EECS, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea

    Jong-Hwan Kim

  6. National University of Singapore, Singapore

    Prahlad Vadakkepat

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ding, R., Eastwood, P., Mondada, F., Groß, R. (2012). A Stochastic Self-reconfigurable Modular Robot with Mobility Control. In: Herrmann, G., et al. Advances in Autonomous Robotics. TAROS 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7429. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32527-4_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32527-4_38

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32526-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32527-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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