Self-assembly on Demand in a Group of Physical Autonomous Mobile Robots Navigating Rough Terrain

O’Grady, Rehan; Groß, Roderich; Mondada, Francesco; Bonani, Michaël; Dorigo, Marco

doi:10.1007/11553090_28

Cited by 27 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Typically, the experiment is set up to provide a context in which the pre-programmed behaviour appears meaningful. In this study, we quantify the benefits of adaptive self-assembly over and above static pre-programmed behaviour, extending our previous work in which we implemented an adaptive self-assembly mechanism [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Performance benefits of self-assembly in a swarm-bot

O’Grady

Groß

Christensen

et al. 2007

2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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Abstract-Mobile robots are said to be capable of selfassembly when they can autonomously form physical connections with each other. Despite the recent proliferation of selfassembling systems, little work has been done on using selfassembly to add functional value to a robotic system, and even less on quantifying the contribution of self-assembly to system performance.In this study we demonstrate and quantify the performance benefits of i) acting as a physically larger self-assembled entity, ii) using self-assembly adaptively and iii) making the robots morphologically aware (the self-assembled robots leverage their new connected morphology in a task specific way).In our experiments, two real robots must navigate to a target over a-priori unknown terrain. In some cases the terrain can only be overcome by a self-assembled connected entity. In other cases, the robots can reach the target faster by navigating individually.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Performance benefits of self-assembly in a swarm-bot

O’Grady

Groß

Christensen

et al. 2007

2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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“…The swarm-bot platform has been used for several studies, mainly in swarm intelligence and collective robotics (see for instance [41,42]). Overcoming steep hills and transport of heavy objects are notable examples of tasks which a single robot could not complete individually, but which have been solved successfully by teams of collaborating robots [43,44,45].…”

Section: Hardware Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Fireflies to Fault-Tolerant Swarms of Robots

Christensen

O’Grady

Dorigo

2009

IEEE Trans. Evol. Computat.

136

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Abstract. One of the essential benefits of multi-robot systems is redundancy. In case one robot breaks down, another robot can take steps to repair the failed robot or take over the failed robot's task. Although fault tolerance and robustness to individual failures have often been central arguments in favor of multi-robot systems, few studies have been dedicated to the subject. In this study, we take inspiration from the synchronized flashing behavior observed in some species of fireflies. We derive a completely distributed algorithm to detect non-operational individuals in a multi-robot system. Each robot flashes by lighting up its onboard LEDs and neighboring robots are driven to flash in synchrony. Since robots that are suffering catastrophic failures do not flash periodically, they can be detected by operational robots. We explore the performance of the proposed algorithm both on a real world multirobot system and in simulation. We show that failed robots are detected correctly and in a timely manner, and we show that a system composed of robots with simulated self-repair capabilities can survive relatively high failure rates.

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“…Overcoming steep hills and transport of heavy objects are notable examples of tasks which a single robot could not complete individually, but which have been solved successfully by teams of collaborating robots O'Grady et al 2005;Nouyan et al 2006).…”

Section: Hardware Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

SWARMORPH-script: a language for arbitrary morphology generation in self-assembling robots

2008

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In certain multi-robot systems, the physical limitations of the individual robots can be overcome using self-assembly-the autonomous creation of physical connections between individual robots to form a larger composite robotic entity. However, existing robotic systems capable of self-assembly have little or no control over the morphology of the self-assembled entities. This restricts the adaptability of such systems, since robots can carry out certain tasks more efficiently if their morphology is specialized to the task. In this paper, we extend the distributed mechanism presented in (Christensen et al. in IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 14(4):18-25, 2007) that allows autonomous mobile robots to self-assemble into specific morphologies. We present a simple language, SWARMORPH-script, that allows for concise descriptions of the rules that govern the distributed morphology growth process. Local visual communication allows physically connected robots to send and receive strings. A string can be a rule identifier that triggers execution of predefined logic for extending a morphology. Alternatively, whole scripts can be communicated and subsequently executed on the receiving robot. On real self-propelled robots capable of self-assembly, we demonstrate how specific morphologies can be constructed, how the size of a morphology can be regulated, and how multiple morphologies can be assembled. We also show how the transmission of entire scripts gives the robots the capacity to participate in the formation of morphologies of which they had no a priori knowledge.

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Self-assembly on Demand in a Group of Physical Autonomous Mobile Robots Navigating Rough Terrain

Cited by 27 publications

References 16 publications

Performance benefits of self-assembly in a swarm-bot

Performance benefits of self-assembly in a swarm-bot

From Fireflies to Fault-Tolerant Swarms of Robots

SWARMORPH-script: a language for arbitrary morphology generation in self-assembling robots

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