Object transportation by simple robots: Application of Brazil nut effect

This paper reports an object transport using Brazil nut effect, in which the group of robots and a handled object correspond to small particles and a large particle, respectively. Based on this effect, the passive object can be transported to a given destination in spite that each robot does not know the location of the object being transported or the location of the destination. Homogeneous system and two types of heterogeneous system are introduced and examined their performance by computer simulation.