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Distributed Control Algorithm For a Multicellular Robotic Organism

avinash-ranganath's picture

This is my master thesis, and it is a module under the EU sponsored
reconfigurable modular robotics research project called SYMBRION [www.symbrion.eu]. The project was developed at the IPR [Institute for Process control and Robotics], Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany. The main goal of the SYMBRION project is to develop robots that are capable of operating as a large swarm of robots
as well as building large organisms, by connecting individual robots together, for investigating and developing
novel principles of evolution and adaptation for symbiotic organisms.
The aim of my thesis was to develop a framework for creating control
algorithm to perform locomotion and simple obstacle avoidance tasks in
robotic organisms. I have implemented a distributed control approach for controlling the robotic organism, such that each module decided its
own action based on its topological location, environmental variables
and local communication. And the global behavior of an organism [Like
locomotion] emerges from the coordinated local action of individual
modules. I was able to test the framework by implementing the above
mentioned tasks in three different robotic organisms [Caterpillar, ‘V’
and Scorpion], as seen in the video.