Modular robots

Self-reconfigurable modular robots are robotic systems consisting of a number of self-contained robotic modules that autonomously interconnect in different positions and orientations, thereby varying the shape and size of the overall modular robot. To facilitate reliable and efficient interconnection between them, constituent robotic modules must possess suitably robust and reliable docking mechanisms, based on a mechanically robust connector design, capable of facilitating sound inter-module power sharing and communication. In this paper, we briefly describe and discuss the prominent connector characteristics of existing self-reconfigurable modular robots, and in turn, describe the design, development and performance evaluation of a connector that possesses a combination of these prominent characteristics, with the intention to facilitate efficient self-assembly, self-reconfiguration and self-healing behaviors of a self-reconfigurable modular robot.

Large facilities present with wide rage of tasks and modular robots present as a flexible robot solution. Some of the tasks to be performed in large facilities can vary from, achieving locomotion with different modular robot (M-Robot) configurations or the execution of cooperative tasks such as moving objects or manipulating objects with multiple modular robot configurations (M-Robot colony) and existing robot deployments. The coordination mechanisms enable the M-Robots to perform cooperative tasks as efficiently as specialised or standard robots. The approach is based on the combination of two communication types i.e., Inter Robot and Intra Robot communications. Through this communication architecture , tight and loose cooperation strategies are implemented to synchronise modules within a M-Robot configuration and to coordinate M-Robots belonging to the colony. These cooperation strategies are based on a closed-loop discrete time method, a remote clock reading method and a negotiation protocol. The coordination mechanisms and cooperation strategies are implemented into a real modular robotic system, SMART. The need for using such a mechanism in hazardous section of large scientific facilities is presented along with constraints and tasks. Locomotion execution of the mobile M-Robots colony in a bar-pushing task is used as an example for cooperative task execution of the coordination mechanisms and results are presented.

The main objective of the proposed research work is to establish communication between different modules in modular robots. In this paper, a 7 module modular robot system capable of achieving both local and global communication is presented. The proposed work present, how RF communication between various modules in a modular robot can be effected by changing the operating frequency and distance between the modules. The RF based modular robots are highly useful in the applications like space exploration, where the scenarios are highly unpredictable.

• We propose a distributed and parallel mechanism for self-reconfiguration of modular robots. • L-systems are introduced to the distributed self-reconfiguration for a parallel system. • The Cellular Automata are simplified with only two rules. • This approach is convergent to target structure, robust to failure of modules and scalable to module numbers. a b s t r a c t For distributed self-reconfiguration of Modular Self-Reconfigurable (MSR) robots, one of the main difficulties is the contradiction between limited information of decentralized modules and well-organized global structure. This paper presents a distributed and parallel mechanism for decentralized self-reconfiguration of MSR robots. This mechanism is hybrid by combining Lindenmayer systems (L-systems) describing the topological structure as configuration target and Cellular Automata (CA) for local motion planning of individual modules. Turtle interpretations are extended to modular robotics for generating module-level predictions from global description. According to local information, independent modules make motion planning by Cellular Automata in parallel. This distributed mechanism is robust to failure of modules, scalable to varying module numbers, and convergent to predefined reconfiguration targets. Simulations and statistical results are provided for validating the proposed algorithm.

The control of robot swarming in a distributed manner is a difficult problem because global behaviors must emerge as a result of many local actions. This paper uses a bio-inspired control method called the Digital Hormone Model (DHM) to control the tasking and executing of robot swarms based on local communication, signal propagation, and stochastic reactions. The DHM model is probabilistic, dynamic, fault-tolerant, computationally efficient, and can be easily tasked to change global behavior. Different from most existing distributed control and learning mechanisms, DHM considers the topological structure of the organization, supports dynamic reconfiguration and self-organization, and requires no globally unique identifiers for individual robots. The paper describes the DHM and presents the experimental results on simulating biological observations in the forming of feathers, and simulating wireless communicated swarm behavior at a large scale for attacking target, forming sensor networks, self-repairing, and avoiding pitfalls in mission execution.

 Abstract— We aim to develop a new self-reconfigurable modular robot, Cross-Ball, so that we can apply bio-inspired morphogenesis mechanisms to modular robots to adapt to dynamic environments automatically. To this end, the mechanical design of modular robots has to be flexible and robust enough for various complex configurations. The major contributions of the design of this Cross-Ball robots include: 1) it provides several flexible 3D reconfiguration capabilities, such as rotating, parallel, and diagonal movements; (2) a flexible and robust hardware platform for modular robots using more complex self-reconfiguration algorithms; and (3) the mobility of each individual module. Furthermore, a skeleton-based approach is proposed for the motion control of the modules, where the module movements can be conducted in groups to improve the system reconfiguration efficiency. Some simulation results have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed module design and the corresponding controller by reconfiguring the robots to various complex configurations.

SUMMARYIn this paper, we propose novel algorithms for reconfiguring modular robots that are composed ofnatoms. Each atom has the shape of a unit cube and can expand/contract each face by half a unit, as well as attach to or detach from faces of neighboring atoms. For universal reconfiguration, atoms must be arranged in 2 × 2 × 2 modules. We respect certain physical constraints: each atom reaches at most constant velocity and can displace at most a constant number of other atoms. We assume that one of the atoms has access to the coordinates of atoms in the target configuration.Our algorithms involve a total ofO(n2) atom operations, which are performed inO(n) parallel steps. This improves on previous reconfiguration algorithms, which either useO(n2) parallel steps or do not respect the constraints mentioned above. In fact, in the settings considered, our algorithms are optimal. A further advantage of our algorithms is that reconfiguration can take place within the union of the source ...