Collective Construction
Termite mounds can be towering, complex structures on
the scale of several meters,with complicated functional architectures
that include features such as ventilation systems and humidity
regulation. The architects are vast numbers of simple insects on the
scale of millimeters, working with no centralized control or
preplanning. Yet these animals achieve tremendous complexity,
parallelism and robustness, from individuals that are small, simple,
and expendable.
How swarms of social insects build the structures
they do is a fascinating topic not fully understood. Engineering
offers a complementary problem: How could you program an artificial
robotic swarm to build a particular structure?
Our group studies how this can be achieved. We combine ideas from swarm intelligence and programmable
self-assembly, to create algorithms, theory, and robot
designs. We have developed a family of decentralized algorithms
by which simple robots -- without wireless communication or
GPS/localization -- can cooperate to build a large classes of
user-specified structures out of modular blocks. More recently we are
developing a new robotic platform, called
TERMES, where climbing robots can build structures much larger
than themselves.
Collective construction has many important potential
civilian applications, from the construction of human habitats to
containments or support structures in disaster areas. It also is a
difficult challenge for robotics and poses many interesting challenges
in mechanical design, manipulation, autonomy, and multi-robot
coordination.
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