Reconfigurable group robots adaptively transforming a mechanical structure - Crawl motion and adaptive transformation with new algorithms

Abstract

This paper describes group robots adaptively construct a mechanical structure. The feature of the robots is high rigidity by adopting sliding mechanisms. This study discusses algorithms of crawl motion and adaptive construction considering mechanical constraints of the robots. The proposed algorithm is based on local communication of the robots. We introduce a scheme of a temporary leader which is autonomously specified by form of the structure. The scheme decreases amount of information in communication between the robots. The experimental demonstrations are also shown in this paper.