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

Reduced to minimum cost: Lay-down heliostat with monolithic mirror-panel and closed loop control

A complete set of innovations are combined to a new heliostat of minimum cost. The main improvements are a monolithic sandwich-cantilever-arm concentrator of low material and fabrication cost, a lay down of the panels during storms to reduce the maximum wind loading of the structure, and a closed loop control to reduce the accuracy requirements on the mechanical components of the tracker. The design of the main heliostat components is described. The dimensioning of the heliostat is based on wind loads determined by wind tunnel tests. The resulting cost reduction and an outlook on possible modifications for further cost reduction is given

Symbiotic robot organisms: REPLICATOR and SYMBRION projects

Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organisms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional capabilities which allow all members to survive better in their environment. In this article we show an overview of two large European projects dealing with new collective robotic systems which utilize principles derived from natural symbiosis. The paper provides also an overview of typical hardware, software and methodological challenges arose along these projects, as well as some prototypes and on-going experiments available on this stage