Configuration Control for Physical Coupling of Heterogeneous Robot Swarms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a heterogeneous robot swarm system capable of physically coupling to form structures and decoupling for individual tasks, using passive mechanisms and a novel control algorithm, demonstrated through experiments with up to nine robots.

Contribution

It presents a new system and control algorithm for physical coupling in heterogeneous robot swarms, enabling dynamic structure formation and task flexibility.

Findings

Successful formation of structures with up to nine robots

Efficient coupling and decoupling behaviors demonstrated

Adaptive structural configurations based on environment

Abstract

In this paper, we present a heterogeneous robot swarm system that can physically couple with each other to form functional structures and dynamically decouple to perform individual tasks. The connection between robots can be formed with a passive coupling mechanism, ensuring minimum energy consumption during coupling and decoupling behavior. The heterogeneity of the system enables the robots to perform structural enhancement configurations based on specific environmental requirements. We propose a connection-pair oriented configuration control algorithm to form different assemblies. We show experiments of up to nine robots performing the coupling, gap-crossing, and decoupling behaviors.