A stochastic self-replicating robot capable of hierarchical assembly

  • Authors:

  • Georgios Kaloutsakis;Gregory s. Chirikjian

  • Affiliations:

  • Medotics ag, saint-louis-str. 31, c/o alltax ag, 4056 basel, switzerland;Department of mechanical engineering, the johns hopkins university, 3400 n. charles, 223 latrobe hall, baltimore, md 21218, usa

  • Venue:
  • Robotica
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

This paper presents the development of a self-replicating mobile robot that functions by undergoing stochastic motions. The robot functions hierarchically. There are three stages in this hierarchy: (1) An initial pool of feed modules/parts together with one functional basic robot; (2) a collection of basic robots that are spontaneously formed out of these parts as a result of a chain reaction induced by stochastic motion of the initial seed robot at stage 1; (3) complex formations of joined basic robots from stage 2. In the first part of this paper we demonstrate basic stochastic self-replication in unstructured environments. A single functional robot moves around at random in a sea of stock modules and catalyzes the conversion of these modules into replicas. In the second part of the paper, the robots are upgraded with a layer that enables mechanical connections between robots. The replicas can then connect to each other and aggregate. Finally, self-reconfigurability is presented for two robotic aggregations.