A challenging task for a robotic radio network is to establish the connectivity among a set of entities (humans or radio nodes) in an unknown environment with minimum number of robots. The main difficulty is that the locations of the entities and the radio connectivities between the physical locations are not known in advance. We represent the problem by a topological graph of locations with known access links but unknown radio links and develop a novel ANCHOR algorithm for a set of autonomous robots to discover radio links dynamically and self-organize a radio network to connect the given entities with the least number of robots. We show in simulation analysis the algorithm scale near-linearly with maximum number of connected hops away from the terminals. Experiment also shows performance improvement with increasing number of robots.

This paper presents a bio-inspired, distributed control algorithm calledTENTACLESfor a group of radio robots to move, self-configure and maintain communication between some critical entities (such as humans, command centers, or other systems) in an unknown environment. The basic idea is to direct robots' explorative movements to grow ¿tentacles¿ from entities and establish links when tentacles meet. This approach can self-heal failures of robots and improve communication coverage and quality over time. Experiments in simulations and real robots have shown positive results.

Superbot consists of Lego-like but autonomous robotic modules that can reconfigure into different systems for different tasks. Examples of configurable systems include rolling tracks or wheels (for efficient travel), spiders or centipedes (for climbing), snakes (for burrowing in ground), and climbers (for inspection and repair in space). This video shows several configurations and behaviors that are new for modular and reconfigurable robots. Each SuperBot module is a complete robotic system and has a power supply, micro- controllers, sensors, communication, three degrees of freedom, and six connecting faces (front, back, left, right, up and down) to dynamically connect to other modules. This design allows flexible bending, docking, and continuous rotation. A single module can move forward, back, left, right, flip-over, and rotate as a wheel. Modules can communication with each other for totally distributed control and can support arbitrary module reshuffling during their operation. The modules have both internal and external sensors for monitoring self-status and environmental parameters. They can form arbitrary configurations (graphs) and can control these configurations for different functionality such as locomotion, manipulation, and self-repair. This video shows the latest status the SuperBot modules and all these behaviors were made in just one week. The fact that SuperBot can achieve so much in so short a time demonstrates the unique value of modular, multifunctional and self-reconfigurable robots.

This paper presents a modular and reconfigurable robot for multiple locomotion modes based on reconfigurable modules. Each mode consists of characteristics for the environment type, speed, turning-ability, energy-efficiency, and recover ability from failures. The paper demonstrates this solution by the Superbot robot that combines advantages from MTRAN, CONRO and others. Experimental results, both in real robots and in simulation, have shown the validity of the approach and demonstrated the movements of forward, backward, turn, sidewinder, maneuver, and travel on batteries up to 500 meters on a flat terrain. In physics-based simulation, Superbot can perform as snake, caterpillar, insect, spider, rolling track, H-walker, etc., and move 1.0 meter/second on flat terrain with less than 6 W/module, and climb slopes of no less 40 degrees