Group robots forming a mechanical structure-development of slide motion mechanism and estimation of energy consumption of the structural formation

This study deals with group robots forming a mechanical structure. The group robots consist of identical cellular robots with same mechanical structure and information processing. To realize the group robots in hardware, we propose a slide motion mechanism that supports a large mechanical loading. We report the performance test, and energy consumption required for transformation of the cellular robot under various configurations. This paper also discusses the shortest route with minimum energy in transformation when an initial configuration and a final one are given.