Title
Supervised morphogenesis: Exploiting morphological flexibility of self-assembling multirobot systems through cooperation with aerial robots.
Abstract
Self-assembling robots have the potential to undergo autonomous morphological adaptation. However, due to the simplicity in their hardware makeup and their limited perspective of the environment, self-assembling robots are often not able to reach their potential and adapt their morphologies to tasks or environments without external cues or prior information. In this paper, we present supervised morphogenesis — a control methodology that makes self-assembling robots truly flexible by enabling aerial robots to exploit their elevated position and better view of the environment to initiate and control (hence supervise) morphology formation on the ground. We present results of two case studies in which we assess the feasibility of the presented methodology using real robotic hardware. In the case studies, we implemented supervised morphogenesis using two different aerial platforms and up to six self-assembling autonomous robots. We furthermore quantify the benefits attainable for self-assembling robots through cooperation with aerial robots using simulation-based studies. The research presented in this paper is a significant step towards realizing the true potential of self-assembling robots by enabling autonomous morphological adaptation to a priori unknown tasks and environments.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1016/j.robot.2018.11.007
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Self-assembling robots,Heterogeneous multirobot teams,Distributed systems,Air/ground robot teams,Robot coordination,Modular robots
Computer vision,Computer science,A priori and a posteriori,Exploit,Self-reconfiguring modular robot,Artificial intelligence,Robot,Multirobot systems,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
112
0921-8890
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.36
29
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nithin Mathews11368.24
Anders Lyhne Christensen244238.22
Alessandro Stranieri3463.03
Alexander Scheidler418216.52
Marco Dorigo5140311211.61