Hormones for Self-Reconfigurable Robots

Wei-Min Shen, Behnam Salemi, and Peter Will. Hormones for Self-Reconfigurable Robots. In Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-6), pp. 918–925, IOS Press, Venice, Italy, 2000.

Download

[112.0kB pdf] 

Abstract

Self-reconfigurable, or metamorphic, robots can change their individual and collective shape and size to meet operational demands. Since these robots are constructed from a set of autonomous and connectable modules (or agents), control of the robots and coordination among the modules are highly complex and challenging tasks. The difficulties stem from the fact that all locomotion, perception, and decision making must be distributed among a network of modules. This network has a dynamic topology, and each individual module has only limited resources in terms of computational power and local information about the topology in its neighborhood. To meet these challenges, this paper presents a distributed control mechanism inspired by the concept of hormones in biological systems. We view hormones as broadcast messages that trigger different actions in different modules, and exploit such to coordinate motions and perform reconfiguration in the context of limited communications and dynamic network topologies. The paper develops a primitive theory of hormone-based control, and reports the experimental results of applying such a control mechanism to our CONRO metamorphic robots, along with the results of simulations.

BibTeX Entry

@InProceedings{	  shen2000hormones-for-self-reconfigurable-robots,
  abstract	= {Self-reconfigurable, or metamorphic, robots can change
		  their individual and collective shape and size to meet
		  operational demands. Since these robots are constructed
		  from a set of autonomous and connectable modules (or
		  agents), control of the robots and coordination among the
		  modules are highly complex and challenging tasks. The
		  difficulties stem from the fact that all locomotion,
		  perception, and decision making must be distributed among a
		  network of modules. This network has a dynamic topology,
		  and each individual module has only limited resources in
		  terms of computational power and local information about
		  the topology in its neighborhood. To meet these challenges,
		  this paper presents a distributed control mechanism
		  inspired by the concept of hormones in biological systems.
		  We view hormones as broadcast messages that trigger
		  different actions in different modules, and exploit such to
		  coordinate motions and perform reconfiguration in the
		  context of limited communications and dynamic network
		  topologies. The paper develops a primitive theory of
		  hormone-based control, and reports the experimental results
		  of applying such a control mechanism to our CONRO
		  metamorphic robots, along with the results of simulations.
		  },
  address	= {Venice, Italy},
  author	= {Wei-Min Shen and Behnam Salemi and Peter Will},
  booktitle	= {Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-6)},
  pages		= {918--925},
  publisher	= {IOS Press},
  title		= {Hormones for Self-Reconfigurable Robots},
  year		= {2000}
}