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The study of self-assembling robots represents a promising strand within the emerging field of modular robots research. Self-assembling robots have the potential to autonomously adapt their bodies to new tasks and changing environments long after their initial deployment by forming new or reorganizing existing physical connections to peer robots. In previous research, many approaches have been presented to enable self-assembling robots to form composite morphologies. Recent technological advances have also increased the number of robots able to form such morphologies by at least two orders of magnitude. However, to date, composite robot morphologies have not been able to solve real-world tasks nor have they been able to adapt to changing conditions entirely without human assistance or prior knowledge.In this thesis, we identify three reasons why self-assembling robots may not have been able to fully unleash their potential and propose appropriate solutions. First, composite morphologies are not able to show sensorimotor coordination similar to those seen in their monolithic counterparts. We propose "mergeable nervous systems" -- a novel methodology that unifies independent robotic units into a single holistic entity at the control level. Our experiments show that mergeable nervous systems can enable self-assembling robots to demonstrate feats that go beyond those seen in any engineered or biological system. Second, no proposal has been tabled to enable a robot in a decentralized multirobot system select its communication partners based on their location. We propose a new form of highly scalable mechanism to enable "spatially targeted communication" in such systems. Third, the question of when and how to trigger a self-assembly process has been ignored by researchers to a large extent. We propose "supervised morphogenesis" -- a control methodology that is based on spatially targeted communication and enables cooperation between aerial and ground-based self-assembling, Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Key to our project flora robotica is the idea of creating a bio-hybrid system of tightly coupled natural plants and distributed robots to grow architectural artifacts and spaces. Our motivation with this ground research project is to lay a principled foundation towards the design and implementation of living architectural systems that provide functionalities beyond those of orthodox building practice, such as self-repair, material accumulation and self-organization. Plants and robots work together to create a living organism that is inhabited by human beings. User-defined design objectives help to steer the directional growth of the plants, but also the system's interactions with its inhabitants determine locations where growth is prohibited or desired (e.g., partitions, windows, occupiable space). We report our plant species selection process and aspects of living architecture. A leitmotif of our project is the rich concept of braiding: braids are produced by robots from continuous material and serve as both scaffolds and initial architectural artifacts before plants take over and grow the desired architecture. We use light and hormones as attraction stimuli and far-red light as repelling stimulus to influence the plants. Applied sensors range from simple proximity sensing to detect the presence of plants to sophisticated sensing technology, such as electrophysiology and measurements of sap flow. We conclude by discussing our anticipated final demonstrator that integrates key features of flora robotica, such as the continuous growth process of architectural artifacts and self-repair of living architecture., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures

Projecte realitzat mitjançant programa de mobilitat. University of Southern Denmark.Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute, We explore the suitability of Wireless Radio Frequency (RF) inter-module communication for modular robots. Our hypothesis is that, instead of using Infrared (IR) and wired links, RF could be used for module localization and for local and global communication.