skip to main content
10.1145/1242073.1242104acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessiggraphConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Distributed systems of self-reconfiguring robots

Published: 21 July 2002 Publication History

Abstract

A robot designed for a single purpose can perform a specific task very well, but it may perform poorly on a different task, or in a different environment. This is acceptable if the environment is structured; however, if the task is in an unknown environment, then a robot with the ability to change shape to suit the environment and the required functionality will be more likely to succeed. We wish to create more versatile robots by using self-reconfiguration: hundreds of small modules will autonomously organize and reorganize as geometric structures to best fit the terrain on which the robot has to move, the shape of the object the robot has to manipulate, or the sensing needs for the given task. For example, a robot could synthesize a snake shape to travel through a narrow tunnel, and then morph into a six-legged insect to navigate on rough terrain upon exit.

References

[1]
Kotay, K., and Rus, D. 1999. Locomotion versatility through self-reconfiguration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 26, 217--232.
[2]
Rus, D., and Chirikjian, G. 2001. Special issue on self-reconfigurable robots. Autonomous Robots 10, 1, 1--124.
[3]
Rus, D., Butler, Z., Kotay, K., and Vona, M. 2002. Self-reconfiguring robots. Communications of the ACM 45, 3, 39--45.

Cited By

View all
  • (2016)SCI-FIProceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/2971485.2971489(1-10)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2016
  • (2005)Locomotion control of distributed self-reconfigurable robot based on cellular automataProceedings of the 2005 international conference on Advances in Intelligent Computing - Volume Part II10.1007/11538356_19(179-188)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2005

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
SIGGRAPH '02: ACM SIGGRAPH 2002 conference abstracts and applications
July 2002
337 pages
ISBN:1581135254
DOI:10.1145/1242073
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 July 2002

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

SIGGRAPH02
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,822 of 8,601 submissions, 21%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)3
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
Reflects downloads up to 16 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2016)SCI-FIProceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/2971485.2971489(1-10)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2016
  • (2005)Locomotion control of distributed self-reconfigurable robot based on cellular automataProceedings of the 2005 international conference on Advances in Intelligent Computing - Volume Part II10.1007/11538356_19(179-188)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2005

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media