Related papers: A self-organizing robotic aggregate using solid an…
Imagine a robot that can assemble a functional product from the individual parts presented in any configuration to the robot. Designing such a robotic system is a complex problem which presents several open challenges. To bypass these…
Biological systems, such as the octopus, exhibit masterful cross-scale manipulation by adaptively reconfiguring their entire form, a capability that remains elusive in robotics. Conventional soft grippers, while compliant, are mostly…
Synthetic active collectives, composed of many nonliving individuals capable of cooperative changes in group shape and dynamics, hold promise for practical applications and for the elucidation of guiding principles of natural collectives.…
Past experiences under the designation of "Swarm Paintings" conducted in 2001, not only confirmed the possibility of realizing an artificial art (thus non-human), as introduced into the process the questioning of creative migration,…
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…
Which kind of complex behavior may arise from self-organizing principles? We investigate this question for the case of snake-like robots composed of passively coupled segments, with every segment containing two wheels actuated separately by…
The fast urbanization and climate change challenges require solutions that enable the efficient movement of people and goods in cities. We envision future cities to be composed of high-performing walkable districts where transportation…
Rigid bodies, plastic impact, persistent contact, Coulomb friction, and massless limbs are ubiquitous simplifications introduced to reduce the complexity of mechanics models despite the obvious physical inaccuracies that each incurs…
Collective decision-making is an essential capability of large-scale multi-robot systems to establish autonomy on the swarm level. A large portion of literature on collective decision-making in swarm robotics focuses on discrete decisions…
Traditional aerial vehicles have limitations in their capabilities due to actuator constraints, such as motor saturation. The hardware components and their arrangement are designed to satisfy specific requirements and are difficult to…
Hyper-redundant robots offer high dexterity, making them good at operating in confined and unstructured environments. To extend the reachable workspace, we built a multi-segment flexible rack actuated planar robot. However, the compliance…
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…
Much of the Earth and many surfaces of extraterrestrial bodies are composed of in-cohesive particle matter. Locomoting on granular terrain is challenging for common robotic devices, either wheeled or legged. In this work, we discover a…
Deformable object manipulation presents a unique set of challenges in robotic manipulation by exhibiting high degrees of freedom and severe self-occlusion. State representation for materials that exhibit plastic behavior, like modeling clay…
The collective ability of organisms to move coherently in space and time is ubiquitous in any group of autonomous agents that can move and sense each other and the environment. Here we investigate the origin of collective motion and its…
A configuration of $n$ unit-cube-shaped \textit{modules} (or \textit{robots}) is a lattice-aligned placement of the $n$ modules so that their union is face-connected. The reconfiguration problem aims at finding a sequence of moves that…
We demonstrate how multiagent systems provide useful control techniques for modular self-reconfigurable (metamorphic) robots. Such robots consist of many modules that can move relative to each other, thereby changing the overall shape of…
Magnetic levitation is about to revolutionize in-machine material flow in industrial automation. Such systems are flexibly configurable and can include a large number of independently actuated shuttles (movers) that dynamically rebalance…
Collective behavior models, such as aggregation and flocking, usually assume self-propelled robots that can directly execute their desired speed and direction of motion without fundamental constraints. However, autonomous sailing robots…
The self-organization of robots for the formation of structures and shapes is a stimulating application of the swarm robotic system. It involves a large number of autonomous robots of heterogeneous behavior, coordination among them, and…