Self-reconfigurable modular robots -hardware and software development in AIST

In this paper we present the development of hardware and software of self-reconfigurable modular robots in National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. Thanks to their flexibility, versatility and fault-tolerance, self-reconfigurable modular robots are expected to be used in various application fields, such as space, rescue or micro-sized world. Our research group has been pioneering this new field and developed several hardware prototypes and corresponding software that exploit the robots´ potential. We have been successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the self-reconfigurable modular robots based on experiments from different aspects. Starting from two-dimensional (2D) self-assembling and self-repairing machine fractum, we review hardware development in diverse directions, like to micro-world, three-dimensional (3D) structures and motions; as well as the progress of control software, including distributed control and recent evolutionary motion inquisition.