Self-organizing collective robots with morphogenesis in a vertical plane

This paper presents a novel concept of self-organizing collective robots with morphogenesis in a vertical plane. For physical reconfiguration of a swarm of robots against gravity, new types of mechanisms and control strategies are proposed and demonstrated. Basic feasibility of the mechanisms was confirmed through an experiment adopting four prototype robots. Each robot is composed of a body and a pair of arms. The body is equipped with permanent magnets for bonding with another robot. The arms change the bonding configuration by rotating and sliding motions. As for the control strategies, we proposed algorithms which can generate specific global formations of robots from local and minimum interactions between neighboring robots. It is shown that the proposed algorithms can successfully conduct the swarm of robots to the predetermined configurations.