Cellular Automata for Decentralized Control of Self-Reconfigurable Robots

Abstract

The key research questions in self-reconfiguring robotics are how to design and engineer robot systems capable of self-reconfiguration, and how to plan for such systems. Several interesting robot designs have been proposed [RV01, KR99, MKY+98, TMK+99, FK90, PCSC96, YDR00, SWC99, UK00]. For each of these systems, architecture-dependent algorithms that couple planning to the specific actuation have been proposed. This includes real breakthroughs in both centralized planning [KR99, YMK+00] and decentralized planning [BBR, MYK+01, TMK+99]. This body of work has brought some real insight into planning and control. We believe we are at a point where we can step back and examine more general questions about self-reconfiguration planning in an architecture-independent way. It is important to examine architecture-independent algorithms that can be instantiated to many different systems because...