Title :
Self-reconfiguration by a Modular Robot That Has a Cell-differentiation Ability
Author :
Maegawa, Tomoki ; Ishiguro, Akio
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Computational Sci. & Eng., Nagoya Univ.
Abstract :
One of the most graceful phenomena widely observed in nature is self-reconfiguration; living systems spontaneously reconfigure their body structure through the developmental process. While this remarkable phenomenon still remains much to be understood in biology, the concept of self-reconfiguration becomes undeniably indispensable also in artificial systems as they increase in size and complexity. Based on this consideration, this paper discusses the realization of self-reconfiguration with the use of a modular robot. The main contributions of this paper are twofold: the first concerns the exploitation of emergent phenomena stemming from the carefully designed interaction between the control and mechanical systems; the second is related to the implementation of different inter-modular adhesiveness derived from an artificial cell-differentiation. In this, form generation by self-reconfiguration is considered as the result of time evolution toward the most dynamically stable state. Preliminary simulation results show that stable self-reconfiguration is achieved irrespective of the initial positional relationship among the modules
Keywords :
robots; self-adjusting systems; cell-differentiation ability; mechanical system; modular robot; stable self-reconfiguration; Aggregates; Computational modeling; Control systems; Emergent phenomena; Evolution (biology); Force control; Mechanical systems; Robots; Size control; Systems biology; Modular robot; cell adhesiveness; cell-differentiation; emergence; morphogenesis; self-reconfiguration;
Conference_Titel :
SICE-ICASE, 2006. International Joint Conference
Conference_Location :
Busan
Print_ISBN :
89-950038-4-7
Electronic_ISBN :
89-950038-5-5
DOI :
10.1109/SICE.2006.315494