Autonomous Self-Assembly in Swarm-Bots

In this paper, we discuss the self-assembling capabilities of the swarm-bot, a distributed robotics concept that lies at the intersection between collective and self-reconfigurable robotics. A swarm-bot is comprised of autonomous mobile robots called s-bots. S-bots can either act independently or se...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on robotics 2006-12, Vol.22 (6), p.1115-1130
Main Authors: Gross, R., Bonani, M., Mondada, F., Dorigo, M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Associate members
Autonomous
collective
Computer science
control theory
systems
Control theory. Systems
Displays
distributed
DNA
Exact sciences and technology
Grippers
Intersections
Laboratories
Mobile robots
modular
Morphology
reconfigurable
Robotic assembly
Robotics
Robots
Robustness
Self assembly
State of the art
swarm robotics
swarm-bot
Terrain
Vision systems
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Summary:In this paper, we discuss the self-assembling capabilities of the swarm-bot, a distributed robotics concept that lies at the intersection between collective and self-reconfigurable robotics. A swarm-bot is comprised of autonomous mobile robots called s-bots. S-bots can either act independently or self-assemble into a swarm-bot by using their grippers. We report on experiments in which we study the process that leads a group of s-bots to self-assemble. In particular, we present results of experiments in which we vary the number of s-bots (up to 16 physical robots), their starting configurations, and the properties of the terrain on which self-assembly takes place. In view of the very successful experimental results, swarm-bot qualifies as the current state of the art in autonomous self-assembly
ISSN:1552-3098
1941-0468
DOI:10.1109/TRO.2006.882919