Swarm robots: From self-assembly to locomotion

Inspired by the swarm behaviours of social insects, research into the self-assembly of swarm robots has become an attractive issue in the robotic community. Unfortunately, there are very few platforms for self-assembly and locomotion in the field of swarm robotics. The Sambot is a novel self-assembling modular robot that shares characteristics with swarm robots and self-reconfigurable robots. Each Sambot can move autonomously and connect with the other. This paper discusses the concept of combining self-assembly and locomotion for swarm robots. Distributed control algorithms for self-assembly and locomotion are proposed. Using five physical Sambots, experiments were carried out on autonomous docking, self-assembly and locomotion. Our control algorithm for self-assembly can also be used to realize the autonomous construction and self-repair of robotic structures consisting of a large number of Sambots.