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Many industrial tasks-such as sanding, installing fasteners, and wire harnessing-are difficult to automate due to task complexity and variability. We instead investigate deploying robots in an assistive role for these tasks, where the robot…
This paper proposes an initial theory for robotic systems that can be fully self-maintaining. The new design principles focus on functional survival of the robots over long periods of time without human maintenance. Self-maintaining…
Bio-hybrid systems---close couplings of natural organisms with technology---are high potential and still underexplored. In existing work, robots have mostly influenced group behaviors of animals. We explore the possibilities of mixing…
Cooperation and competition among stand-alone swarm agents increase collective fitness of the whole system. A principally new kind of collective systems is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, when they build symbiotic organisms.…
We present a system enabling a modular robot to autonomously build structures in order to accomplish high-level tasks. Building structures allows the robot to surmount large obstacles, expanding the set of tasks it can perform. This…
Applications, such as military and disaster response, can benefit from robotic collectives' ability to perform multiple cooperative tasks (e.g., surveillance, damage assessments) efficiently across a large spatial area. Coalition formation…
An object-oriented combinator chemistry was used to construct an artificial organism with a system architecture possessing characteristics necessary for organisms to evolve into more complex forms. This architecture supports modularity by…
In robot swarms operating under highly restrictive sensing and communication constraints, individuals may need to use direct physical proximity to facilitate information exchange. However, in certain task-related scenarios, this requirement…
Collective intelligence and autonomy of robot swarms can be improved by enabling the individual robots to become aware they are the constituent units of a larger whole and what is their role. In this study, we present an algorithm to enable…
Homogeneity and heterogeneity represent a well-known trade-off in the design of modular robot systems. This work addresses the heterogeneity concept, its rationales, design choices and performance evaluation. We introduce challenges for…
In this paper, we extended previous studies of cooperating autonomous robots to include situations when environmental changes and changes in the number of robots in the swarm can affect the efficiency to execute tasks assigned to the swarm…
Inter-individual differences are studied in natural systems, such as fish, bees, and humans, as they contribute to the complexity of both individual and collective behaviors. However, individuality in artificial systems, such as robotic…
The Kilobot is a widely used platform for investigation of swarm robotics. Physical Kilobots are slow moving and require frequent recalibration and charging, which significantly slows down the development cycle. Simulators can speed up the…
We present a method for the control of robot swarms using two subsets of robots: a larger group of simple, oblivious robots (which we call the workers) that is governed by simple local attraction forces, and a smaller group (the guides)…
Smart system applications (SSAs) built on top of cyber-physical and socio-technical systems are increasingly composed of components that can work both autonomously and by cooperating with each other. Cooperating robots, fleets of cars and…
Swarm Robotics is an emerging field of adapting the phenomenon of natural swarms to robotics. It is a study of robots that are aimed to mimic natural swarms, like ants and birds, to form a system that is scalable, flexible, and robust.…
Utilizing robotic systems in the construction industry is gaining popularity due to their build time, precision, and efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a system that allows the coordination of multiple manipulator robots for…
This paper proposes a distributed on-orbit spacecraft assembly algorithm, where future spacecraft can assemble modules with different functions on orbit to form a spacecraft structure with specific functions. This form of spacecraft…
Biological systems often involve the self-assembly of basic components into complex and function- ing structures. Artificial systems that mimic such processes can provide a well-controlled setting to explore the principles involved and also…
The deployment of simple emergent behaviors in swarm robotics has been well-rehearsed in the literature. A recent study has shown how self-aggregation is possible in a multitask approach -- where multiple self-aggregation task instances…