Development a modular robot that models the interplay between plasma membrane and cytoplasm

Abstract

We develop a modular robot that models the interplay between plasma membrane and cytoplasm in a cellar slime mold cell. In modular robotics, it is indispensable to solve the trade-off problem between swam coherency and reconfigurability. A cellar slime mold cell solves this problem, i.e., it locomotes adaptively while reconfiguration by contraction and extension of plasma membrane. This phenomenon is done by the interplay between plasma membrane and cytoplasm. Based on this knowledge, we simulate chemical reactions that describe interplay between plasma membrane and cytoplasm on real physical modular robots. As a result of experiment, we observed the locomotion of the proposed modular robot depending on difference of interplay between plasma- membrane-like modules and cytoplasm-like modules.