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Self-Reconfigurable
Robots/Systems and Applications Workshop
2005 Robotics Conference at MIT
Program
MIT Strata Center, June 11, 2005
8:25AM: Welcome, Wei-Min Shen, USC/ISI
9:15-10:00AM: Sotoshi Murata, Tokyo Institute of Technology
10:00-10:45AM: Robert C. Fitch, Heterogeneous Reconfiguration Planning
10:45-11:30AM: Wei-Min Shen, University of Southern California / ISI
11:30-12:15PM: Seth
Goldstein, Carnegie Mellon University, Claytronics.
12:15-1:30PM: Lunch
1:30-2:15PM: Greg Chirikjian, John Hopkins University
2:15-3:00PM: Mark Yim, University of Pennsylvania, Reconfiguration Mechanism Design.
3:00-3:45PM: Daniela Rus and Keith Kotay, MIT, Generic Distributed Algorithms for
Self-Reconfigurable Robots.
4:30-5:15PM: Hod Lipton, Connell University, 3D Stochastic Reconfiguration of Modular
Robots.
5:15-6:00PM: Discussion for future self-reconfigurable robots;
Organizers
Wei-Min Shen, University
of Southern California
Mark Yim, University of Pennsylvania
Daniela Rus, Massachusettes Institute of Technology
Eric Klavins, University of Washington
Greg Chirikjian, John Hopkins University
Description
Self-reconfigurable modular robots are metamorphic systems that can
autonomously change their logical or physical configurations (such as
shapes, sizes, or formations), as well as their locomotion and
manipulation, based on the mission and the environment in hand. Because
of their modularity, versatility, self-healing ability and low cost
reproducibility, such robots provide a flexible approach for achieving
complex tasks in unstructured and dynamic environments. They are well
suited for applications such as search and rescue, reconnaissance,
self-assembly, inspections in hazardous environments, and exploration
in
space and ocean. They also pose fundamental research challenges for
robotics and other major branches of computer science, mechatronics and
control theory.
The challenges are due to the dynamic topology of the network of
modules, the limited resource (power, size, torque, precisions, etc.)
of
individual modules, the difficulties in global synchronization, the
preclusion of centralized decision makers, and the unreliability of
communication among modules. This workshop will present the recent
progress in the research community for these challenging tasks and
their
real-world applications in space and other related fields. We will
present distributed control architecture and algorithms, discuss the
ability of plug-and-play mechatronics parts and arbitrarily reshuffling
modules (body-parts) in systems, discuss the recent theoretical
development for self-reconfigurable systems, analyze the
hardware/software challenges we face to make these robots for
multifunctional applications, and outlook the future of this exciting
research topic.
In particular, we will have the following sub-areas and topics as the
focused discussion topics. These areas include, but not limited to:
1. We will describe recent results in developing distributed algorithms
for self-reconfiguring robots that use self-reconfiguration for
locomotion and for shape synthesis. We will also describe our recent
results in automatically synthesizing such controllers.
2. Self-Diagnosis, Self-Repair and Self-Replication in Robotic Systems
Very little attention has been paid to the subject of self-diagnosis,
self-repair and self-replication in the robotics community, and this
may
be one reason why fully autonomous robots have not yet found the same
range of applications as their remote-controlled counterparts. We are
therefore investigating the following:
(2.1) Development of design principles for easy assembly/disassembly of
robots by robots of the same kind;
(2.2) Characterization of minimal capabilities required of each robot
in a collection of given size;
(2.3) Definition of a finite set of behaviors, or default sequence of
actions, for each robot to perform during self-diagnosis and
self-repair;
(2.4) Constructing and experimenting with a prototype (``toy model'')
system; These ideas will be demonstrated on a particular physical
system
in the talk.
3. We describe a formal approach to modeling self-organization based on
graph grammars and discuss distributed behavior synthesis algorithms
within this context. We then show how to set the model in the context
of
statistical mechanics so that "assembly yields" and "most likely
behaviors" can be predicted. We demonstrate the approach with a modular
robot system of "programmable parts" that are randomly mixed on an air
table and that are capable of binding to and detaching from each other.
Using our approach, we can direct the system to form global assemblies
and processes. We may also include other work with MEMs self assembly
and in DNA self assembly.
4. We will address the issues and trade-offs in design of
self-reconfiguring systems, using examples from the self-reconfiguring
robot community. Issues include: architectures, docking mechanisms,
enumeration of configurations, ease of programming, ease of design,
actuation, manufacturability and robustness.
Format
We will have short presentations by participants, but mostly
discussions
and interactions for the above topics. We anticipant a half-day
workshop
will be sufficient, but if there is a big response, we can make it a
full-day workshop.
In the past, similar workshops were conducted in Japan 10/2004 in
conjunction with ICRA2004 in Japan, and in Korea in 8/2001 for IROS2001.
Participants
People from NASA (JPL, Ames, and other centers), AFOSR and AFRI on
self-reconfigurable hardware systems, Universities that involves
self-reconfigurable robots and systems (such as MIT, UT, USC, …),
companies (such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, …), ARO on self-healing
systems, … International researchers such as Demark’s ATRON project,
Japan’s MTRON project, China’s reconfigurable robotics group, …
More specifically, Cornell's stochastic self-reconfiguration group
(Lipson), EU's self-reconfiguration effort (including Nilsson, Mondova
(sp?),.. ), Japan's (Fukuda, Asama, Yoshida, others...) Nanyang
U. self-reconfiguration group Singapore (chen), Canada's modular
robotics efforts at U Toronto (Goldenberg)...
Why is the topic interesting?
Research in self-reconfiguration and related topics have been active in
academic for many years now, and it is only recently that the results
of
these research are beginning to be used and applied to serious
real-world applications such as sustainable space exploration, homeland
security, and others. This workshop comes at the right time because
many
researchers are seeing the values of the field, and many companies are
beginning to investigate their resources, and because more and more
people are believe that this is the future of large systems to be
constructed reliably and economically.
Target Groups
University researchers, industrial, space exploration, theoretical
people in computer science.
Contacts
Wei-Min Shen, University of Southern California
Mark Yim, University of Pennsylvania
Daniela Rus, Massachusettes Institute of Technology
Eric Klavins, University of Washington
Greg Chirikjian, John Hopkins University
Main Contact
Wei-Min Shen - Director, Polymorphic
Robotics Laboratory
Associate Director, USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems
University of Southern California
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
Phone: 310 - 448 - 8710
Fax: 310 - 822 - 0751
http://www.isi.edu/robots
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