In certain multi-robot systems, the physical limitations of the individual robots can be overcome using self-assembly—the autonomous creation of physical connections between individual robots to form a larger composite robotic entity. However, existing robotic systems capable of self-assembly have little or no control over the morphology of the self-assembled entities. This restricts the adaptability of such systems, since robots can carry out certain tasks more efficiently if their morphology is specialized to the task. In this paper, we extend the distributed mechanism presented in (Christensen et al. in IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag. 14(4):18–25, 2007) that allows autonomous mobile robots to self-assemble into specific morphologies. We present a simple language, SWARMORPH-script, that allows for concise descriptions of the rules that govern the distributed morphology growth process. Local visual communication allows physically connected robots to send and receive strings. A string can be a rule identifier that triggers execution of predefined logic for extending a morphology. Alternatively, whole scripts can be communicated and subsequently executed on the receiving robot. On real self-propelled robots capable of self-assembly, we demonstrate how specific morphologies can be constructed, how the size of a morphology can be regulated, and how multiple morphologies can be assembled. We also show how the transmission of entire scripts gives the robots the capacity to participate in the formation of morphologies of which they had no a priori knowledge.
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Jun 1, 2009
Domenico Prattichizzo 
Open Access