Autonomous Morphogenesis in Self-assembling Robots Using IR-Based Sensing and Local Communications

This paper presents a simple decentralised morphology control mechanism for a swarm of self-assembling robots. Each robot in the system is fully autonomous and controlled using a behaviour-based approach with only infrared-based local sensing and communications. A graph-based recruitment strategy is proposed to guide the growth of 2D planar organisms, and local communications are used to self-organise the behaviours of robots during the morphogenesis process. The effectiveness of the approach has been verified, in simulation, for a diverse set of target structures. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Multi-Robot Organisms: State of the Art

This paper represents the state of the art development on the field of artificial multi-robot organisms. It briefly considers mechatronic development, sensor and computational equipment, software framework and introduces one of the Grand Challenges for swarm and reconfigurable robotics

Self-assembly and Self-repair during Motion with Modular Robots

Self-reconfigurable modular robots consist of multiple modular elements and have the potential to enable future autonomous systems to adapt themselves to handle unstructured environments, novel tasks, or damage to their constituent elements. This paper considers methods of self-assembly, bringing together robotic modules to form larger organism-like structures, and self-repair, removing and replacing faulty modules damaged by internal events or environmental phenomena, which allow group tasks for the multi-robot organism to continue to progress while assembly and repair take place. We showthat such “inmotion" strategies can successfully assemble and repair a range of structures. Previously developed self-assembly and self-repair strategies have required group tasks to be halted before they could begin. This paper finds that self-assembly and self-repair methods able to operate during group tasks can enable faster completion of the task than previous strategies, and provide reliability benefits in some circumstances. The practicality of these new methods is shown with physical hardware demonstrations. These results show the feasibility of assembling and repairing modular robots whilst other tasks are in progress

Morphogenesis in robot swarms

Morphogenesis allows millions of cells to self-organize into intricate structures with a wide variety of functional shapes during embryonic development. This process emerges from local interactions of cells under the control of gene circuits that are identical in every cell, robust to intrinsic noise, and adaptable to changing environments. Constructing human technology with these properties presents an important opportunity in swarm robotic applications ranging from construction to exploration. Morphogenesis in nature may use two different approaches: hierarchical, top-down control or spontaneously self-organizing dynamics such as reaction-diffusion Turing patterns. Here, we provide a demonstration of purely self-organizing behaviors to create emergent morphologies in large swarms of real robots. The robots achieve this collective organization without any self-localization and instead rely entirely on local interactions with neighbors. Results show swarms of 300 robots that self-construct organic and adaptable shapes that are robust to damage. This is a step toward the emergence of functional shape formation in robot swarms following principles of self-organized morphogenetic engineering

Toward Growing Robots: A Historical Evolution from Cellular to Plant-Inspired Robotics

This paper provides the very first definition of "growing robots": a category of robots that imitates biological growth by the incremental addition of material. Although this nomenclature is quite new, the concept of morphological evolution, which is behind growth, has been extensively addressed in engineering and robotics. In fact, the idea of reproducing processes that belong to living systems has always attracted scientists and engineers. The creation of systems that adapt reliably and effectively to the environment with their morphology and control would be beneficial for many different applications, including terrestrial and space exploration or the monitoring of disasters or dangerous environments. Different approaches have been proposed over the years for solving the morphological adaptation of artificial systems, e.g., self-assembly, self-reconfigurability, evolution of virtual creatures, plant inspiration. This work reviews the main milestones in relation to growing robots, starting from the original concept of a self-replicating automaton to the achievements obtained by plant inspiration, which provided an alternative solution to the challenges of creating robots with self-building capabilities. A selection of robots representative of growth functioning is also discussed, grouped by the natural element used as model: molecule, cell, or organism growth-inspired robots. Finally, the historical evolution of growing robots is outlined together with a discussion of the future challenges toward solutions that more faithfully can represent biological growth