- Email: [email protected]
Reconfigurable modular robotics
Robotics and Autonomous Systems 62 (2014) 943–944
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/robot
Editorial
Reconfigurable modular robotics
Modularity and reconfiguration are two of the key concepts that enable nature as well as engineers to construct large systems reliably and economically. In contrast, most robots today are built monolithically. The goal of modular robotics can thus be viewed as an effort to introduce modularity into robotics and thereby reap the advantages of modular design. A modular design allows a wide range of robots to be assembled from a basic set of modules. If modules fail they can easily be replaced by spare modules. The cost of the entire system can be reduced because individual modules can be mass-produced. Developments in modular robotics are leading to new application domains of reconfigurable systems and new challenges for the robotics community. This special issue focuses on current advances with respect to these challenges, which include the hardware and software areas of reconfigurable modular robotics and collective robotics, issues related to dynamic network topology and limited module resources, difficulties in global synchronization, the exclusion of centralized decision makers, reliable communication among modules, and minimalist sensing and actuation capabilities. The inspiration for this special issue came from technical presentations and discussions at the workshop on Reconfigurable Modular Robotics: Challenges of Mechatronic and Bio-Chemo-Hybrid Systems, held at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in San Francisco, USA, on 25 September 2011. Following the workshop, an open invitation was announced to solicit journal-length papers. Submissions were evaluated according to the full peer-review process, and nine papers were selected from a total of 16 submissions. The papers in this special issue capture the breadth and vibrancy of current work in reconfigurable modular robots. Topics range from the design of new robotic hardware and software to novel theoretical results for challenging algorithmic problems. Moses, Ma, Wolfe, and Chirikjian present a new family of active and passive components for modular robotic construction. They demonstrate a robot made from these components that can assemble other devices made from the same components, and also present a new probabilistic method for quantifying the performance of position-controlled module assembly. Rubenstein, Ahler, Hoff, Cabrera, and Nagpal present a low-cost robot designed to operate in collectives of over 1000 robots. The robot’s design allows decentralized cooperative algorithms to be tested on large systems. Using a group of these robots, the authors demonstrate four interesting swarm behaviors. An and Rus propose a new programmable self-folding sheet model and architecture, and present algorithms for the automatic 0921-8890/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2013.08.015
design and control of self-folding sheets. They also present experimental results with two types of self-folding robots. Baca, Hossain, Dasgupta, Dutta, and Nelson present the design of a new modular robot based on a 4DOF module with three rotational joints and one prismatic joint. They study the problem of how to choose the best configuration of these modules as an instance of graph-based coalition formation and apply linear programming to compute an optimal coalition structure. Spröwitz, Moeckel, Vespignani, Bonardi, and Ijspeert present a new modular robotic system designed for adaptive furniture. They present results from five hardware experiments including various cases of locomotion and handling lightweight passive elements. Kuo and Fitch address the problem of reliable and scalable communication for modular robots. They introduce a new multi-radio architecture for neighbor-to-neighbor communication that avoids the problem of mutual interference and guarantees constant communication bandwidth between all pairs of connected modules. Hou and Shen resolve the long-standing conjecture that the optimal reconfiguration planning problem of finding a shortest reconfiguration sequence to transform a chain-based modular reconfigurable robot from an arbitrary configuration into another is NP-complete. They present a formal proof of complexity, an algorithm that solves the problem optimally, and a polynomialtime greedy algorithm that finds a near-optimal solution. MacNair and Ueda study biologically inspired cell array actuators designed to possess desirable properties inherent in human muscle. Their modular system combines linear actuators with compliant material so that they can be combined with one another in varied topologies to produce large-scale motion. They present a general method for calculating the dynamic equations of motion for such systems, and present two SMA-based instantiations of this idea. Bonarini, Matteucci, Migliavacca, and Rizzi extend the concept of modularity in software development to the hardware level. They present an open-source framework of hardware modules, a communication protocol, and middleware designed to reduce the time and effort required to build a prototype robot. They also present a case study where the framework is applied to build an omnidirectional base. We would like to thank all authors and reviewers of submitted papers for their hard work and dedication that made this special issue possible. We are also grateful to Rüdiger Dillman (RAS Editor-in-Chief) and Christine Brand for their excellent advice and support.
944
∗ Corresponding editor.
Editorial / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 62 (2014) 943–944
Guest editors Robert Fitch ∗ Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), The University of Sydney, Australia E-mail address: [email protected].
Serge Kernbach Cybertronica Research—Research Center of Advanced Robotics and Environmental Science, Germany
Kasper Stoy IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Wei-Min Shen University of Southern California, USA
Radhika Nagpal Harvard University, USA
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/robot
Editorial
Reconfigurable modular robotics
Modularity and reconfiguration are two of the key concepts that enable nature as well as engineers to construct large systems reliably and economically. In contrast, most robots today are built monolithically. The goal of modular robotics can thus be viewed as an effort to introduce modularity into robotics and thereby reap the advantages of modular design. A modular design allows a wide range of robots to be assembled from a basic set of modules. If modules fail they can easily be replaced by spare modules. The cost of the entire system can be reduced because individual modules can be mass-produced. Developments in modular robotics are leading to new application domains of reconfigurable systems and new challenges for the robotics community. This special issue focuses on current advances with respect to these challenges, which include the hardware and software areas of reconfigurable modular robotics and collective robotics, issues related to dynamic network topology and limited module resources, difficulties in global synchronization, the exclusion of centralized decision makers, reliable communication among modules, and minimalist sensing and actuation capabilities. The inspiration for this special issue came from technical presentations and discussions at the workshop on Reconfigurable Modular Robotics: Challenges of Mechatronic and Bio-Chemo-Hybrid Systems, held at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in San Francisco, USA, on 25 September 2011. Following the workshop, an open invitation was announced to solicit journal-length papers. Submissions were evaluated according to the full peer-review process, and nine papers were selected from a total of 16 submissions. The papers in this special issue capture the breadth and vibrancy of current work in reconfigurable modular robots. Topics range from the design of new robotic hardware and software to novel theoretical results for challenging algorithmic problems. Moses, Ma, Wolfe, and Chirikjian present a new family of active and passive components for modular robotic construction. They demonstrate a robot made from these components that can assemble other devices made from the same components, and also present a new probabilistic method for quantifying the performance of position-controlled module assembly. Rubenstein, Ahler, Hoff, Cabrera, and Nagpal present a low-cost robot designed to operate in collectives of over 1000 robots. The robot’s design allows decentralized cooperative algorithms to be tested on large systems. Using a group of these robots, the authors demonstrate four interesting swarm behaviors. An and Rus propose a new programmable self-folding sheet model and architecture, and present algorithms for the automatic 0921-8890/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2013.08.015
design and control of self-folding sheets. They also present experimental results with two types of self-folding robots. Baca, Hossain, Dasgupta, Dutta, and Nelson present the design of a new modular robot based on a 4DOF module with three rotational joints and one prismatic joint. They study the problem of how to choose the best configuration of these modules as an instance of graph-based coalition formation and apply linear programming to compute an optimal coalition structure. Spröwitz, Moeckel, Vespignani, Bonardi, and Ijspeert present a new modular robotic system designed for adaptive furniture. They present results from five hardware experiments including various cases of locomotion and handling lightweight passive elements. Kuo and Fitch address the problem of reliable and scalable communication for modular robots. They introduce a new multi-radio architecture for neighbor-to-neighbor communication that avoids the problem of mutual interference and guarantees constant communication bandwidth between all pairs of connected modules. Hou and Shen resolve the long-standing conjecture that the optimal reconfiguration planning problem of finding a shortest reconfiguration sequence to transform a chain-based modular reconfigurable robot from an arbitrary configuration into another is NP-complete. They present a formal proof of complexity, an algorithm that solves the problem optimally, and a polynomialtime greedy algorithm that finds a near-optimal solution. MacNair and Ueda study biologically inspired cell array actuators designed to possess desirable properties inherent in human muscle. Their modular system combines linear actuators with compliant material so that they can be combined with one another in varied topologies to produce large-scale motion. They present a general method for calculating the dynamic equations of motion for such systems, and present two SMA-based instantiations of this idea. Bonarini, Matteucci, Migliavacca, and Rizzi extend the concept of modularity in software development to the hardware level. They present an open-source framework of hardware modules, a communication protocol, and middleware designed to reduce the time and effort required to build a prototype robot. They also present a case study where the framework is applied to build an omnidirectional base. We would like to thank all authors and reviewers of submitted papers for their hard work and dedication that made this special issue possible. We are also grateful to Rüdiger Dillman (RAS Editor-in-Chief) and Christine Brand for their excellent advice and support.
944
∗ Corresponding editor.
Editorial / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 62 (2014) 943–944
Guest editors Robert Fitch ∗ Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), The University of Sydney, Australia E-mail address: [email protected].
Serge Kernbach Cybertronica Research—Research Center of Advanced Robotics and Environmental Science, Germany
Kasper Stoy IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Wei-Min Shen University of Southern California, USA
Radhika Nagpal Harvard University, USA