Toshio Fukuda and Seiya Nakagawa

Abstract:
This paper deals with experimental aspects of a practical realization method for the cellular robotic system (CEBOT). CEBOT is a dynamically reconfigurable robotic systems which can reconfigure robots in an optimal structure, depending on working purposes and environments This is one of the autonomous distributed, cooperative systems, which are capable of carrying out communication, connection, and separation between functional units, called "cells" in this paper. Such a hardware construction has long been desired for the new generation of robotic systems. In this paper, it is shown that the modified CEBOT does not require the precise positioning accuracy in the cell connections, unlike the series I in a previous report. With the on-board photosensors and ultrasonic sensors, the newly built robotic system can perform the automatic approach, connection and separation successfully.

Keywords: Application of control, Dynamically reconfigurable robotic system, Cell structure