Self-reconfigurable modular robot - experiments on reconfiguration and locomotion

Kamimura, Akiya; Murata, Satoshi; Yoshida, Eiichi; Kurokawa, Haruhisa; Tomita, Kohji; Kokaji, Shigeru

doi:10.1109/iros.2001.973422

Cited by 60 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The work in [17] presents the design of a modular robot and manual configuration and motion interface with a simulator; it deals mostly with self-reconfiguration experiments and motion planning rather than a high-level approach involving transformation of robots. Other work involving simulation and reconfiguration of modular robots includes [32], where a gripper made of modular robots is used to navigate an obstaclefilled environment and to pick up other modules.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-level control of modular robots

Castro

Koehler

Kress-Gazit

2011

2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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Reconfigurable modular robots can exhibit different specializations by rearranging the same set of parts comprising them. Actuating modular robots can be complicated because of the many degrees of freedom that scale exponentially with the size of the robot. Effectively controlling these robots directly relates to how well they can be used to complete meaningful tasks. This paper discusses an approach for creating provably correct controllers for modular robots from high-level tasks defined with structured English sentences. While this has been demonstrated with simple mobile robots, the problem was enriched by considering the uniqueness of reconfigurable modular robots. These requirements are expressed through traits in the high-level task specification that store information about the geometry and motion types of a robot.Given a high-level problem definition for a modular robot, the approach in this paper deals with generating all lower levels of control needed to solve it. Information about different robot characteristics is stored in a library, and two tools for populating this library have been developed. The first approach is a physics-based simulator and gait creator for manual generation of motion gaits. The second is a genetic algorithm framework that uses traits to evaluate performance under various metrics. Demonstration is done through simulation and with the CKBot hardware platform.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-level control of modular robots

Castro

Koehler

Kress-Gazit

2011

2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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“…This solution seemed interesting because of the potential 3-D configurations of the swarm-bot and of the possibility of self-reconfiguration of a single s-bot without disconnecting from the swarm-bot (a functionality that has been exploited also by Kamimura et al [5]). The first full-size wood model showed that the resulting structure was hyperstatic and would have required precise control and strong coordinated planning of the actions of each s-bot.…”

Section: From Theory To Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pioneering examples of self-reconfigurable robots are MTRAN [5] and PolyBot [6]. An overview of existing systems and characteristics can be found in the works of Kamimura et al [5] and Yim et al [7]. MTRAN and PolyBot use a large number of simple modules, have been physically implemented, and can self-reconfigure.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The cooperation of swarm-bots - Physical interactions in collective robotics

Mondada

Gambardella²,

Floreano³

et al. 2005

IEEE Robot. Automat. Mag.

169

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“…Michael claims that in the future 'fractal robots' will emerge which can completely change their shape and so if damaged, can reassemble them selves to recover their previous capabilities [26]. Kamimura has built robots that can reconfigure themselves to perform different tasks (as have Dittrich et al [6]), though he has not yet looked into the idea of self-repair [19]. Perhaps the work most similar to that described here was performed by Støy [31], in which a chain robot made of nine modules is robust to signal loss and able to continue effective locomotion.…”

Section: Self-repairing Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innately adaptive robotics through embodied evolution

Mahdavi

Bentley

2006

Auton Robot

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-Autonomous adaptation in robots has become recognised as crucial for devices deployed in remote or inhospitable environments. The aim of this work is to investigate autonomous robot adaptation, focussing on damage recovery and adaptation to unknown environments. An embodied evolutionary algorithm is introduced and its capabilities demonstrated with experimental results. This algorithm is shown to be able to control the motion of a robot snake effectively; this same algorithm inherently recovers the snake's motion after damage. Another experiment shows that the algorithm is capable of contorting a shape-changing antenna in such a way as to minimise the affect of background noise on it, thus allowing the antenna to achieve a better signal.

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Self-reconfigurable modular robot - experiments on reconfiguration and locomotion

Cited by 60 publications

References 17 publications

High-level control of modular robots

High-level control of modular robots

The cooperation of swarm-bots - Physical interactions in collective robotics

Innately adaptive robotics through embodied evolution

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