Lutz Winkler

• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Ein modularer, selbstrekonfigurierbarer Roboter (MSR) besteht aus mehreren, zumeist homogenen Bausteinen, deren Anordnung er eigenständig verändern kann. Durch die Selbst-Rekonfigurierbarkeit ist dieser Roboter in der Lage, unterschiedlichste Aufgaben zu bewältigen, flexibel auf unvorhergesehene Ereignisse zu reagieren und im Fall eines Modulausfal...

Modular robots may become candidates for search and rescue operations or even for future space missions, as they can change their structure to adapt to terrain conditions and to better fulfill a given task. A core problem in such missions is the ability to visit distant places in rough terrain. Traditionally, the motion of modular robots is modeled...

In future space missions, versatile, robust, autonomous and adaptive robotic systems will be required to perform complex tasks. This can be realized using modular robots with the ability to reconfigure to various structures, which allows them to adapt to the environment as well as to a given task. As it is not possible to program beforehand the rob...

Modular robots, which are systems made of many robotic modules, can utilize various types of locomotion. Different approaches can be used to generate these basic motion skills - motion primitives. To move in a complex environment, several motion primitives are needed and a mechanism to switch them is required. This can be realized using a high-leve...

In this paper we will present a formal grammar for the topology description of modular robot organisms. This grammar is a set of production rules for the Robot Formation Language, which is also used to describe the formation of robot swarms. We will show that this formal language is general enough to describe every possible structure of any modular...

We present a new approach to the solution of the self-reconfiguration problem for mobile modular robots (MMRs). The solution describes self-reconfiguration as a planning problem that can be tackled by an automated planner. In addition to the usage of the advanced domain-independent search heuristics within the planner, we introduce domain-specific...

In this paper we will present the CoSMO platform, a new mobile modular self-reconfigurable robot (MSR) platform which we developed within the two European projects REPLICATOR and SYMBRION. Compared to other MSR platforms, this platform possesses huge computational capabilities and it exhibits a large communication bandwidth between connected module...

In this paper, we introduce a new locomotion unit for mobile modular self-reconfigurable robots. The design is based on Archimedes screws and allows a robot to utilize its full potential. With this newly designed drive unit called screw drive, a robot is able to drive in almost every direction while still using a simple, easy to control setup which...

A heterogeneous, mobile, self-reconfigurable and modular robot platform is being developed in the projects SYMBRION and REPLICATOR. The locomotion of the robots as well as forming of the robot organisms will be controlled using evolutionary and bio-inspired techniques. As the robots are not available at the beginning of the projects and experiments...

In this paper, we present a novel diversity measure for a population of modular robot organisms. Evaluating this diversity we will get a prospect of the fitness of future generations of organisms in an evolutionary process. The degree of the diversity in a population is a measure for the adaptability to the environment. If the diversity is too low,...

In this paper we will present the Robot Formation Language (RFL), a topology description language for the formation of multi robot systems, such as robot swarms or self-reconfigurable modular robot platforms. The RFL supports homogeneous as well as heterogeneous multi robot platforms. This is important especially for modular robots (we also call th...

In multi-modular reconfigurable robotics it is extremely challenging to develop control software that is able to generate robust but still flexible behavior of the ‘robotic organism’ that is formed by several independent robotic modules. We propose artificial evolution and self-organization as methodologies to develop such control software. In this...

A distributed simulation environment is introduced in this paper that allows to simulate robot swarms as well as modular robots. This simulator is in use within the European projects ’SYMBRION’ and ’REPLICATOR’. The project’s main goal is to build robots that can aggregate to multi-robot organisms. These robots will be able to act individually, as...

One of the main aspects of the dasiaSYMBRIONpsila and dasiaREPLICATORpsila projects is that the robots can aggregate to form a multi-robot organism. For this reason the control mechanisms have to be able to control a single robot, a swarm of robots or an aggregated collective organism. To break down the complexity of development and to take the int...

Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organisms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional capabilities which allow all members to survive better in thei...

Cooperation and competition among stand - alone swarm agents can increase the collective fitness of the whole system. An interesting form of collective system is demonstrated by some bacteria and fungi, which can build symbiotic organ- isms. Symbiotic communities can enable new functional ca- pabilities which allow all members to survive better in...