直播预告 | 模块化自重构机器人系列①：宾大Mark Kim和康奈尔Kirstin重磅开场！

Mark Yim 是模块化机器人领域的领袖人物，目前是美国历史最悠久的机器人实验室——宾夕法尼亚大学 GRASP 实验室的主任，并担任机器人领域顶刊 IEEE Transactions on Robotics 的 编委（Editor）。他凭借在模块化机器人领域的杰出成就获得了多个有影响力的称号，包括宾夕法尼亚大学最高教学荣誉 Lindback 杰出教学奖、MIT创新100人、美国国家发明家科学院院士等。

AIRS 智能机器人中心主任

Mark Yim

宾夕法尼亚大学GRASP实验室的主任

Kirstin Petersen

Moular Self-Reconfigurable Robots are systems with repeated units that can rearrange themselves to adapt to changing environments, conditions or tasks.  They hold great promise for versatility (changing configuration to whatever task is required), robustness (including self-repair) and low cost (using economies of scale).  In over three decades of study, the first promise of versatility has borne out, a large number of tasks have been demonstrated, and the second one of robustness looks to be feasible and demonstrated in limited cases, the last one of low cost seems to be difficult or ill-founded.   One reason is that tasks that require larger workspaces typically require larger numbers of modules, and the inefficiencies typically grow with the number of modules.  The variable topology truss (VTT) is an approach where the size of the robot can change without changing the number of modules and the topology of the resulting truss can also change. I will present a short review of modular reconfigurable robots we've worked on from the past thirty years and also talk about the technical challenges of the VTT system currently in development.

Soft robotics has developed rapidly over the last two decades, demonstrating simple mechanisms with infinite degrees of freedom and the ability to passively deform to external objects. Recently, this field has started to impact swarm robotics, where many simple robots coordinate locally to achieve complex emergent behaviors. The two fields complement each other well. Where soft robots have limited active degrees of freedom and sensory capabilities, swarms of soft robots can pool resources to achieve capabilities beyond the sum of the parts. Meanwhile, soft swarms have scalable, affordable, multi-functional hardware that is robust to physical interactions between robots and the environment. In this talk, I will exemplify these advantages through two deformable modular robot platforms developed in our lab and emphasize the need for design strategies that span fabrication, operation, and control.