Proposal of “Weak Constraint Swarm” Approach and its Application in Robot Navigation on Rugged Mountainous Terrain

抄録

Swarm robots have attracted great attention due to characteristics such as high robustness, adaptability, etc. Among them, the reconfigurable modular robot is a type of swarm robot formed by combining repeating robotic modules to execute functions that neither scattered swarm robots nor individual robots can. However, these modules might lose some of the flexibility of swarm robots because the connections between these modules are strong. Therefore, in this research, we propose a swarm robot concept called “ Weak Constraint Swarm ”which connects robotic modules by “weak constraints” to obtain functions that cannot be achieved by individual robots, dispersed robot swarm, or modular robots. Then, we propose a swarm robot system called“ ICT-Sheet ”based on the“ Weak Constraint Swarm ”concept for navigation problems in rugged mountainous terrain. And the value of the“Weak Constraint Swarm” approach is further validated by demonstrating the unique capability of“ICT-Sheet”for this particular navigation problem in an experiment.