Development of Three-legged Modular Robots and Demonstration of Collaborative Task Execution

Our research perspective is to develop mechanisms for gathering information efficiently in disaster sites. Ideally this requires mechanisms with capabilities of flexible, on-site, adaptation of the overall shape and of the locomotion strategy to unknown and unstable environments. We have been developing three-legged modular robots which can be interconnected to cooperatively achieve multiple locomotion modes and collaboratively perform tasks that cannot be done by a single module. In this paper, we report the development of experimental modular robots and experimentations with their cooperative activities which evolve out of their various inter-connectivity options.