Hormone-inspired distributed control of self-reconfiguration

Abstract

Self-reconfigurable robots are valued for adaptive and fault-tolerant operation in unpredictable environments on wide range of tasks. Self-reconfiguration is the key ability in accomplishing such tasks with the same set of hardware. Distributed control of self-reconfiguration provides tolerance to failures of individual modules and ability to cope with changing environment conditions. This paper proposes distributed control architecture capable of producing locomotion and self-reconfiguration behaviors. We provide an example of using this control method to accomplish a 'snake to dragon' configuration change in simulation. To the best of our knowledge the problem of distributed self-reconfiguration for chain-based modular robots has not been addressed before.