Self-assembly on demand in a group of physical autonomous mobile robots navigating rough terrain

  • Authors:

  • Rehan O’Grady;Roderich Groß;Francesco Mondada;Michael Bonani;Marco Dorigo

  • Affiliations:

  • IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium;IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium;ASL, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland;ASL, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland;IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • ECAL'05 Proceedings of the 8th European conference on Advances in Artificial Life
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Consider a group of autonomous, mobile robots with the ability to physically connect to one another (self-assemble). The group is said to exhibit functional self-assembly if the robots can choose to self-assemble in response to the demands of their task and environment [15]. We present the first robotic controller capable of functional self-assembly implemented on a real robotic platform. The task we consider requires a group of robots to navigate over an area of unknown terrain towards a target light source. If possible, the robots should navigate to the target independently. If, however, the terrain proves too difficult for a single robot, the robots should self-assemble into a larger group entity and collectively navigate to the target. We believe this to be one of the most complex tasks carried out to date by a team of physical autonomous robots. We present quantitative results confirming the efficacy of our controller. This puts our robotic system at the cutting edge of autonomous mobile multi-robot research.