Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
modules not much larger than a big grain of sand. And just about any
conceivable shape can be made out of sand, including a flat surface such
as a floor, the shape of a human arm, or a hand of whatever shape and
size is necessary to hold or operate a tool or implement. In fact, exactly
those shapes that Daniela Rus refers to in her analogy with the evil robot
in Te r m i n a t o r 2 .
A later design from Rus' laboratory, called the Crystalline Module, is
a cube that can shrink and expand itself. The idea is that each module
will be able to shrink any of its three dimensions (length, width, height)
to half its normal size or expand to double the normal size. If you think
of the way that a worm moves, by contracting a segment of its body and
then causing an adjacent segment to expand, you will understand how a
robot made up of segments is able to use its contractions and expansions
to move itself along a constricted space, where there may be insufficient
height to allow it to “grow” legs and walk.
One task for which self-reconfigurable robots are ideally suited is ur-
ban search and rescue in a collapsed building or a similar disaster scene,
such as in the aftermath of an earthquake or a bomb, where digging for
survivors is slow and can even be dangerous for the rescuers and risky for
the victims. A robot, perhaps initially in the shape of a centipede, could
be dropped through a hole as small as four inches in diameter, without
the rescuers knowing what it will find once it starts to explore. It may
have to crawl through narrow pipes, to climb over rubble, and to clear
some corridors of debris. A single-purpose robot might accomplish one
of these tasks but not all of them. A re-configurable robot can change
shape and adapt to its environment, enabling it to cope with all three
tasks.
The Robot Grand Challenge
In 1999 the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
launched a “grand challenge” for mobile robots, requiring them to dem-
onstrate high levels of intelligence and autonomy while participating
alongside humans in a set of everyday tasks. Each year the challenge
set by the competition organisers is made progressively more difficult.
One of the most interesting challenges during the early years of the
contest was in 2002, when the competing robots were required to at-
tend the AAAI National Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, as though
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