Conro: towards Miniature Self-suucient Metamorphic Robots

CONRO: Towards Miniature Self-Su cient Metamorphic Robots Andr es Casta~ no Wei-Min Shen Peter Will Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292 Abstract Metamorphic robots are an emerging eld in which robots can dynamically and intelligently recon gure shape and size not only for individual robots (intrarobot metamorphing) but also for complex structures that are formed by multiple robots (inter-robot metamorphing). Such capability is highly desirable in tasks such as re ghting, earthquake rescue, and battle eld scouting, where robots must go through unexpected situations and obstacles and perform tasks that are di cult for xed-shape robots. This new research direction presents a number of technical research challenges. Speci cally, metamorphic robots must be able to decompose and reassemble at will from a set of basic connectable modules. Such modules must be small, selfsu cient and relatively homogeneous. In this paper, we present our approach to address these issues and describe the design and implementation of the CONRO modules. These module have a target size of 3 cm3 and are equipped with a low power micro-processor, memory chips, sensors, actuators, power supplies, and miniature mechanical connectors used for communication and power sharing. We will also describe a set of control mechanisms (including one that is inspired by the biological concept of \hormone") for controlling gaits and recon gurations. We conclude the paper with a status report of the CONRO project and a list of the future work needed to fully realize the construction of the CONRO metamorphic robots.