Related papers: ShapeBots: Shape-changing Swarm Robots
Pneumatic soft everting robotic structures have the potential to facilitate human transfer tasks due to their ability to grow underneath humans without sliding friction and their utility as a flexible sling when deflated. Tubular structures…
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…
With increasing numbers of mobile robots arriving in real-world applications, more robots coexist in the same space, interact, and possibly collaborate. Methods to provide such systems with system size scalability are known, for example,…
Shape-programmed sheets morph from one surface into another upon activation by stimuli such as illumination, and have attracted much interest for their potential engineering applications, especially in soft robotics. Complex shape changes…
The simultaneous control of multiple coordinated robotic agents represents an elaborate problem. If solved, however, the interaction between the agents can lead to solutions to sophisticated problems. The concept of swarming, inspired by…
We propose a decentralized algorithm to collaboratively transport arbitrarily shaped objects using a swarm of robots. Our approach starts with a task allocation phase that sequentially distributes locations around the object to be…
The collective performance or capacity of collaborative autonomous systems such as a swarm of robots is jointly influenced by the morphology and the behavior of individual systems in that collective. In that context, this paper explores how…
The emerging behaviors of swarms have fascinated scientists and gathered significant interest in the field of robotics. Traditionally, swarms are viewed as egalitarian, with robots sharing identical roles and capabilities. However, recent…
Robotic surface consisting of many actuators can change shape to perform tasks, such as facilitating human-machine interactions and transporting objects. Increasing the number of actuators can enhance the robot's capacity, but controlling…
Recent advances in learned control, large-scale simulation, and generative models have accelerated progress toward general-purpose robotic controllers, yet the field still lacks platforms suitable for safe, expressive, long-term deployment…
Controlling the shape of deformable linear objects using robots and constraints provided by environmental fixtures has diverse industrial applications. In order to establish robust contacts with these fixtures, accurate estimation of the…
The robotic manipulation of deformable linear objects has shown great potential in a wide range of real-world applications. However, it presents many challenges due to the objects' complex nonlinearity and high-dimensional configuration. In…
This paper introduces a novel bio-mimetic approach for distributed control of robotic swarms, inspired by the collective behaviors of swarms in nature such as schools of fish and flocks of birds. The agents are assumed to have limited…
A social robot is an autonomous robot that interact with people by engaging in social emotive behaviors, skills, capacities, and rules attached to its collaborative role. In order to achieve these goals we believe that modeling the…
Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
Swarms of autonomous surface vehicles equipped with environmental sensors and decentralized communications bring a new wave of attractive possibilities for the monitoring of dynamic features in oceans and other waterbodies. However, a key…
Robots deployed at orders of magnitude different size scales, and that retain the same desired behavior at any of those scales, would greatly expand the environments in which the robots could operate. However it is currently not known…
Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this…
Programmable matter (PM) is a form of matter capable of dynamically altering its physical properties, such as shape or density, through programmable means. From a robotics perspective, PM can be realized as a distributed system consisting…
The safe control of multi-robot swarms is a challenging and active field of research, where common goals include maintaining group cohesion while simultaneously avoiding obstacles and inter-agent collision. Building off our previously…