Towards a team of robots with reconfiguration and repair capabilities

In the future, we propose that there will be largely self-sufficient robot colonies operating on distant planets and in harsh environments here on Earth. A highly desirable quality of such a colony would be the capability of the robots to repair each other. Towards the goal of autonomous repair, we design a robot that can replace the modules composing a similar robot. The final system is teleoperated and module removal/replacement is performed on a test bed. We discuss some of the design trade-offs for such a system and discuss some of the steps required in order to develop a self-sufficient robot colony.

[1]  Keith S. Decker,et al.  Distributed problem-solving techniques: A survey , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[2]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  Millibots: Small Distributed Robots for Surveillance and Mapping , 2000 .

[3]  Jim Gray,et al.  Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It? , 1986, Symposium on Reliability in Distributed Software and Database Systems.

[4]  Pradeep K. Khosla,et al.  Cyber-ATVs: Dynamic and Distributed Reconnaissance and Surveillance Using All-Terrain UGVs , 1999 .

[5]  Brian Randell,et al.  Facing up to Faults , 2000 .

[6]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  A rapidly deployable manipulator system , 1996, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  Control of the Gyrover. A single-wheel gyroscopically stabilized robot , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human and Environment Friendly Robots with High Intelligence and Emotional Quotients (Cat. No.99CH36289).

[8]  Jean-Claude Laprie,et al.  Dependability — Its Attributes, Impairments and Means , 1995 .

[9]  Tucker R. Balch,et al.  Motor Schema-Based Formation Control for Multiagent Robot Teams , 1995, ICMAS.

[10]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  Control of the Gyrover: a single-wheel gyroscopically stabilized robot , 2000, Adv. Robotics.

[11]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  A tutorial on visual servo control , 1996, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[12]  Eiichi Yoshida,et al.  Self-Repairing Mechanical Systems , 2001, Auton. Robots.

[13]  Victor Lesser,et al.  Environment Centered Analysis and Design of Coordination Mechanisms , 1996 .

[14]  Pradeep K. Khosla,et al.  Mechatronic design of a modular self-reconfiguring robotic system , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[15]  Eiichi Yoshida,et al.  Experiment of Self-repairing Modular Machine , 1998, DARS.

[16]  Manuela M. Veloso,et al.  Multiagent Systems: A Survey from a Machine Learning Perspective , 2000, Auton. Robots.

[17]  Luis E. Navarro-Serment,et al.  Modularity in small distributed robots , 1999, Optics East.

[18]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  A Beacon System for the Localization of Distributed Robotic Teams , 1999 .

[19]  Christiaan J. J. Paredis,et al.  Designing Fault-Tolerant Manipulators: How Many Degrees of Freedom? , 1996, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[20]  Carlo Tomasi,et al.  Good features to track , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.

[21]  Mark Yim,et al.  PolyBot: a modular reconfigurable robot , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[22]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  A Probabilistic Approach to Concurrent Mapping and Localization for Mobile Robots , 1998, Auton. Robots.