Autonomous docking of heterogenous robots

Abstract

This student research project is part of the SYMBRION and REPLICATOR projects. Symbrion and Replicator stands for two different, partly overlapping projects named SYMBRION and REPLICATOR, respectively. These two research projects are supported by the European Commission. Their focus is to investigate and develop novel principles of adaptation and evolution for symbiotic multi-robot organisms. These robot organisms consist of super-large-scale swarms of robots. The special feature in the SYMBRION and REPLICATOR projects is that the robots are able to connect to each other. The robot hardware consists of different sensors and actuators. These preconditions enables the dynamically self-organized aggregated organisms to solve different tasks. For the development of novel principles bio-inspired and evolutionary algorithms are used. The focus of this work relies on the development of a mechanism for close cooperation between three different types of robots evolved in the SYMBRION and REPLICATOR projects. These three systems differ in their mode of locomotion and their sensors, as described later. The different robots can move completely free in the area in single mode. At any time, a single robot autonomously decides to form an organism with other robots. To form an organism the single robot has to connect firmly with another one. For this reason, the various robots are equipped with docking elements. The aim of this study is an algorithmic solution linking these docking elements.