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Robotics Research pp 967–983Cite as

Configuration Recognition with Distributed Information for Modular Robots

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Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics ((SPAR,volume 10))

Abstract

Modular robots are usually composed of multiple blocks with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations. It is a significant challenge to recognize modular robot configurations composed of hundreds of modules. Given a new configuration, it is important to match it to an existing configuration and, if true, map each module to the module in this matching configuration when applying many modular robot control schemes. An efficient algorithm is presented to address this matching and mapping problem by making use of distributed information from each module and new structure to design the configuration library. The cluster is discovered and the root module is determined first. Then the matching and mapping problem is solved simultaneously in polynomial time. The algorithm is demonstrated on real modular robots and shown to be efficient to solve this configuration recognition problem.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of NSF grant CCF-1138847.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Chao Liu & Mark Yim

Authors
  1. Chao Liu
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  2. Mark Yim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chao Liu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Nancy M. Amato

  2. Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Greg Hager

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Shawna Thomas

  4. Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Miguel Torres-Torriti

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Liu, C., Yim, M. (2020). Configuration Recognition with Distributed Information for Modular Robots. In: Amato, N., Hager, G., Thomas, S., Torres-Torriti, M. (eds) Robotics Research. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28619-4_65

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