A modular robot that exhibits amoebic locomotion |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Computational Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan;2. Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan;1. State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation (Chengdu University of Technology), Chengdu 610059, China;2. College of Energy, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610059, China;3. School of Mining and Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 1H9, Canada;4. Geological Exploration and Development Research Institute of Chuanqing Drilling Engineering Company Ltd. CNPC, Chengdu 610014, China;5. CNPC Offshore Engineering Company Ltd., Taiyanggong Nan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100028, China;1. School of Information Science and Technology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China;2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China;3. The School of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia;1. Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, 180 Queen''s Gate, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom;2. Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées, École Polytechnique, Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France;3. Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, University of Oxford, Eagle House, Walton Well Road, Oxford, OX2 6ED, United Kingdom |
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| Abstract: | This paper discusses a fully decentralized algorithm able to control the morphology of a two-dimensional modular robot called “Slimebot”, consisting of many identical modules, according to the environment encountered. One of the significant features of our approach is that we explicitly exploit “emergent phenomena” stemming from the interplay between control and mechanical systems in order to control the morphology in real time. To this end, we particularly focus on a “functional material” and a “mutual entrainment”, the former of which is used as a spontaneous connectivity control mechanism between the modules, and the latter of which plays as the core of the control mechanism for the generation of locomotion. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm can induce “amoebic locomotion”, which allows us to successfully control the morphology of the modular robot in real time according to the situation without losing the coherence of the entire system. The results obtained are expected to shed light on how control and mechanical systems should be coupled, and what the carefully designed interaction between control and mechanical systems brings to the resulting behavior. |
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