Jens Liedke

Symbiotic robot organisms: REPLICATOR and SYMBRION projects

Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organisms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional capabilities which allow all members to survive better in their environment. In this article we show an overview of two large European projects dealing with new collective robotic systems which utilize principles derived from natural symbiosis. The paper provides also an overview of typical hardware, software and methodological challenges arose along these projects, as well as some prototypes and on-going experiments available on this stage.

Evolutionary robotics: The next-generation-platform for on-line and on-board artificial evolution

In this paper we present the development of a new self-reconfigurable robotic platform for performing on-line and on-board evolutionary experiments. The designed platform can work as an autonomous swarm robot and can undergo collective morphogenesis to actuate in different morphogenetic structures. The platform includes a dedicated power management, rich sensor mechanisms for on-board fitness measurement as well as very powerful distributed computational system to run learning and evolutionary algorithms. The whole development is performed within several large European projects and is open-hardware and open-software.

The Collective Self-reconfigurable Modular Organism (CoSMO)

In this paper we will present the CoSMO platform, a new mobile modular self-reconfigurable robot (MSR) platform which we developed within the two European projects REPLICATOR and SYMBRION. Compared to other MSR platforms, this platform possesses huge computational capabilities and it exhibits a large communication bandwidth between connected modules. Furthermore, its modules have the ability to share energy among each other and locomote in every main direction by their own. Due to the mechanical design, different organism topologies and motion behaviors enable CoSMO to be flexible to different tasks and to adapt to unforeseen changes in the environment. Nevertheless, the size and the mass of the robot modules are still comparable to other platforms. In this paper, we will give an overview of the architecture of the CoSMO platform, which is in its final stage of development. In particular, we will describe the mechanical, the electronic and the software design. We will present first tests with the prototype of the robot and will show the potential functionality of the platform in simulation.

CoBoLD — A bonding mechanism for modular self-reconfigurable mobile robots

Within this paper, CoBoLD — short for Cone Bolt Locking Device — a bonding mechanism for modular self-reconfigurable autonomous mobile robots is presented. The docking unit is used to physically connect modular robots and/or toolboxes in order to form complex structures and robotic organisms. CoBoLD is specially designed to combine essential features like genderlessness, symmetry, high stiffness, integrated force sensors and electrical contacts, while still using a simple and low cost, easy to manufacture setup. Next to a detailed description of CoBoLDs assembly, first trails and their results are shown in this paper. CoBoLD is used at several different robotic platforms and toolboxes within the EU founded projects SYMBRION and REPLICATOR.

Introducing Wanda - A new robot for research, education, and Arts

A new autonomous mobile robot for research, education and Arts is presented. The robot features a rich variety of sensors and an extendable processing unit while still maintaining very small size (approx. 51 mm in diameter). The robot can be used in combination with a very versatile arena for robot experiments that allows to setup and execute experiments in an easy and automated fashion, which also includes automatic recharging of the robot. We will provide an overview of the basic modular hardware design of the robot including a detailed description of the cpu, power management, bus system, actuators and sensors. A special section will be dedicated to a detailed description of the communication capabilities of the robot. Furthermore we will present the software architecture which provides high-level access to the robots hardware.

Fast on-board motion planning for modular robots

Modular robots, which are systems made of many robotic modules, can utilize various types of locomotion. Different approaches can be used to generate these basic motion skills - motion primitives. To move in a complex environment, several motion primitives are needed and a mechanism to switch them is required. This can be realized using a high-level motion planning. To enable autonomous operation of modular robots equipped with limited computational resources, it is necessary to generate the motion plans on-board, i.e., without external computers. In this paper, we propose a novel simplified motion model of a modular robot, which allows the robot to employ the motion planner as a fast on-board replanner. The proposed approach has been verified both in simulations as well as with real robots.

An alternative locomotion unit for mobile modular self-reconfigurable robots based on archimedes screws

In this paper, we introduce a new locomotion unit for mobile modular self-reconfigurable robots. The design is based on Archimedes screws and allows a robot to utilize its full potential. With this newly designed drive unit called screw drive, a robot is able to drive in almost every direction while still using a simple, easy to control setup which requires very little space. Next to a general design description, we introduce the locomotion model for the screw drive used in simulation as well as in locomotion control of the robot. Additionally, we show several experiments to confirm the versatility of the screw drive.