Hormone-controlled metamorphic robots

Abstract

Metamorphic robots with shape-changing capabilities provide a powerful and flexible approach to complex tasks in unstructured environments. However, due to their dynamic topology and decentralized configuration, metamorphic robots demand control mechanisms that go beyond those used by conventional robots. This paper builds on our previous results of hormone-based control, and develops a novel distributed control algorithm called CELL that can select, synchronize, and execute gaits and other reconfiguration actions without assuming any global configuration knowledge. This algorithm is flexible enough to deal with changes of configuration, and can resolve conflicts between locally selected actions and manage multiple active hormones for producing coherent global effects.