Abstract
In this paper, we develop an autonomous construction system in which a self-contained ground robot builds a protective barrier by means of compliant pockets (i.e., filled bags). We present a stochastic control algorithm based on two biological mechanisms (stigmergy and templates) that takes advantage of compliant pockets for autonomous construction. The control algorithm guides the robot to build the structure without relying on any external motion capture system or external computer. We propose a statistical model to represent the structures built with the compliant pockets, and we provide a set of criteria for assessing the performance of the proposed system. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system, real-robot experiments were carried out. In each experiment, the robot successfully built the structure. The results show the viability of the proposed autonomous construction system.
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Notes
- 1.
The video of the experiment is available at: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/supp/IridiaSupp2014-009.
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Acknowledgments
The research presented in this paper was carried out in the framework of H2-SWARM, an European Science Foundation project partially funded by the Belgian F.R.S.-FNRS, the Italian CNR, and the Swiss NSF. The work was also partially supported by the ERC Advanced Grant “E-SWARM: Engineering Swarm Intelligence Systems” (grant 246939), and by the European Union project ASCENS (n. 257414). M. Dorigo acknowledges support from the Belgian F.R.S.-FNRS.
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Appendix
Appendix
1.1 Parameters
The parameters used in the study are: \(d_{1} = 34\) cm, \(d_{2} = 43\) cm for the scenario; \(r_c = 90\) cm, \(d_m = 15\) cm for the robot; \(\delta _1 = 8\) cm, \(k_1 = 0.05\), \(\alpha = 2\), \(\delta _2 = 30\) cm, \(k_2 = 1\), \(\sigma = 1\) for the controller; and \(h_1 = 2.3\), \(h_2 = 4\) for the metrics.
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Soleymani, T., Trianni, V., Bonani, M., Mondada, F., Dorigo, M. (2016). Autonomous Construction with Compliant Building Material. In: Menegatti, E., Michael, N., Berns, K., Yamaguchi, H. (eds) Intelligent Autonomous Systems 13. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 302. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08338-4_99
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