2A1-B08 Experimental Verification of a Modular Robot That Enables Adaptive Reconfiguration

Abstract

This paper discusses experimental verifications of a two-dimensional modular robot called "Slimebot", consisting of many identical modules, each of which has simple motile functions. We have so far investigated a fully decentralized algorithm able to control the morphology of the modular robot in realtime according to the environment encountered. One of the most significant features of our approach is that we explicitly exploit "emergent phenomena" stemming from the interplay between control and mechanical systems. In order to verify our proposed control scheme, we have constructed real physical Slimebot. Experiments with 10 modules suggest that this robot exhibits significant abilities, i.e., adaptivity, scalability, and fault tolerance without any global information.