Collective construction by cooperation of simple robots and intelligent blocks

Abstract

Collective construction is one interesting topic for swarm robots. We proposed a novel method for it introducing simple robots and relatively intelligent blocks. The blocks are assumed to have a processor, memory and communication device, and assemble the designed structure by controlling the growth direction of which the robot places the next block. The robots just load a block stochastically, and they are conducted to unload the block by the block that forms the structure. We first explain the mechanism of our proposal, and show some fundamental characteristics achieved by computer simulation. Next we explain a robot and blocks which enable to construct the small scale structure in real world.