Anatomy-based organization of morphology and control in self-reconfigurable modular robots

In this paper we address the challenge of realizing full-body behaviors in scalable modular robots. We present an experimental study of a biologically inspired approach to organize the morphology and control of modular robots. The approach introduces a nested hierarchy which decomposes the complexity of assembling and commanding a functional robot made of numerous simple modules. The purpose is to support ver, scalability, and provide design abstraction. The robots we describe incorporate anatomy-inspired parts such as muscles, bones and joints, and these parts in turn are assembled from modules. Each of those parts encapsulates one or more functions, e.g. a muscle can contract. Control of the robot can then be cast as a problem of controlling its anatomical parts rather than each discrete module. To validate this approach we perform experiments with micron-scale spherical catom modules in simulation. The robots we simulate are increasingly complex and include snake, crawler, quadruped...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: NCA
• Authors: David Johan Christensen, Jason Campbell, Kasper Støy
• Keywords: Computer Networks, Design Abstraction, Modular Robots, NCA 2010, Robots