Distributed control diffusion: towards a flexible programming paradigm for modular robots

—A self-reconfigurable robot is a robotic device that can change its own shape. Self-reconfigurable robots are commonly built from multiple identical modules that can manipulate each other to change the shape of the robot. The robot can also perform tasks such as locomotion without changing shape. Programming a modular, self-reconfigurable robot is however a complicated task: the robot is essentially a real-time, distributed embedded system, where control and communication paths often are tightly coupled to the current physical configuration of the robot. To facilitate the task of programming modular, selfreconfigurable robots, we present the concept of distributed control diffusion: distributed queries are used to identify modules that play a specific role in the robot, and behaviors that implement specific control strategies are diffused throughout the robot based on these role assignments. This approach allows the programmer to dynamically distribute behaviors throughout an...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ROBOCOMM
• Authors: Ulrik Pagh Schultz
• Keywords: Communications, Control Diffusion, ROBOCOMM 2007, Self-reconfigurable Robot, —A Self-reconfigurable Robot