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Multi-robot assembly systems are becoming increasingly appealing in manufacturing due to their ability to automatically, flexibly, and quickly construct desired structural designs. However, effectively planning for these systems in a manner…
Objective: The status of human-robot collaboration for assembly applications is reviewed and key current challenges for the research community and practitioners are presented. Background: As the pandemic of COVID-19 started to surface the…
Robotic systems are multi-dimensional entities, combining both hardware and software, that are heavily dependent on, and influenced by, interactions with the real world. They can be variously categorised as embedded, cyberphysical,…
Multi-robot systems are becoming increasingly relevant within diverse application domains, such as healthcare, exploration, and rescue missions. However, building such systems is still a significant challenge, since it adds the complexities…
Coordination of movement and configuration in robotic swarms is a challenging endeavor. Deciding when and where each individual robot must move is a computationally complex problem. The challenge is further exacerbated by difficulties…
Industrial robots are designed as general-purpose hardware with limited ability to adapt to changing task requirements or environments. Modular robots, on the other hand, offer flexibility and can be easily customized to suit diverse needs.…
This paper presents a novel autonomous robotic assembly framework for constructing stable structures without relying on predefined architectural blueprints. Instead of following fixed plans, construction tasks are defined through targets…
The vast majority of existing Distributed Computing literature about mobile robotic swarms considers computability issues: characterizing the set of system hypotheses that enables problem solvability. By contrast, the focus of this work is…
For the robots to achieve a desired behavior, we can program them directly, train them, or give them an innate driver that makes the robots themselves desire the targeted behavior. With the minimal surprise approach, we implant in our…
Industrial robots typically require very structured and predictable working environments, and explicit programming, in order to perform well. Therefore, expensive and time-consuming engineering work is a major obstruction when mediating…
Recent advances in Distributed Computing highlight models and algorithms for autonomous swarms of mobile robots that self-organise and cooperate to solve global objectives. The overwhelming majority of works so far considers handmade…
Active matter physics and swarm robotics have provided powerful tools for the study and control of ensembles driven by internal sources. At the macroscale, controlling swarms typically utilizes significant memory, processing power, and…
This paper introduces the emerging field of astrobotics, that is, a recently-established branch of robotics to be of service to astrophysics and observational astronomy. We first describe a modern requirement of dark matter studies, i.e.,…
We study robot construction problems where multiple autonomous robots rearrange stacks of prefabricated blocks to build stable structures. These problems are challenging due to ramifications of actions, true concurrency, and requirements of…
Since the successful Apollo program, humanity is once again aiming to return to the Moon for scientific discovery, resource mining, and inhabitation. Upcoming decades focus on building a lunar outpost, with robotic systems playing a crucial…
Despite their growing popularity, swarms of robots remain limited by the operating time of each individual. We present algorithms which allow a human to sculpt a swarm of robots into a shape that persists in space perpetually, independent…
The human brain's plasticity allows for the integration of artificial body parts into the human body. Leveraging this, embodied systems realize intuitive interactions with the environment. We introduce a novel concept: embodied swarm…
The problem of robotic synchronisation and coordination is a long-standing one. Combining autonomous, computerised systems with unpredictable real-world conditions can have consequences ranging from poor performance to collisions and…
For planning an assembly of a product from a given set of parts, robots necessitate certain cognitive skills: high-level planning is needed to decide the order of actuation actions, while geometric reasoning is needed to check the…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…