Autonomous Self-Assembly in Swarm-Bots

@article{Gro2006AutonomousSI,
  title={Autonomous Self-Assembly in Swarm-Bots},
  author={R. Gro{\ss} and Michael Bonani and Francesco Mondada and Marco Dorigo},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Robotics},
  year={2006},
  volume={22},
  pages={1115-1130}
}
In this paper, we discuss the self-assembling capabilities of the swarm-bot, a distributed robotics concept that lies at the intersection between collective and self-reconfigurable robotics. A swarm-bot is comprised of autonomous mobile robots called s-bots. S-bots can either act independently or self-assemble into a swarm-bot by using their grippers. We report on experiments in which we study the process that leads a group of s-bots to self-assemble. In particular, we present results of… 
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323 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
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Methods Citations
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323 Citations

Performance benefits of self-assembly in a swarm-bot

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Swarm Robots: From Self-assembly to Locomotion

The control algorithm for self-assembly can also be used to realize the autonomous construction and self-repair of robotic structures consisting of a large number of Sambots.

Self-Assembling Robots

The swarm-bot qualifies as the current state of the art in self-assembling robots, and some initial evidence is provided that self-assembly can offer robotic systems additional capabilities and functions useful for the accomplishment of concrete tasks is supplied.

Self-assembly of Mobile Robots: From Swarm-bot to Super-mechano Colony

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Towards Adaptive Morphogenesis in Self-Assembling Robots

The aim of the ongoing research is to give the robots the capacity to autonomously decide when to self-assemble and what morphology to form based on environmental contingencies.

Self-sssembly and morphology control in a swarm-bot

A distributed control mechanism for a self-propelled self-assembling robotic system that allows robots to form specific, connected morphologies that demonstrates the efficacy of the mechanism by letting groups of up to 9 real robots self-assemble into four different morphologies.

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This work demonstrates and quantify the performance costs and benefits of acting as a physically larger self-assembled entity, letting the system choose when and if to self-assemble, and coordinating the sensing and actuation of the connected robots so that they respond to the environment as a single collective entity.

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Experimental results suggest that configuration of the connection ports can significantly impact the emergence of selfassembly in evolutionary swarm robotics.

Cooperation through self-assembly in multi-robot systems

The results show that it is possible to synthesize, by using evolutionary computation techniques, artificial neural networks that integrate both the mechanisms for sensory-motor coordination and for decision making required by the robots in the context of self-assembly.

Physical Interactions in Swarm Robotics: The Hand-Bot Case Study

The paper analyzes the achieved performance and demonstrates the highly super-linear properties of the accessible volume in respect to the number of robots and suggests that such interesting properties are more accessible for heterogeneous systems or devices achieving complex tasks.
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