Morphology control in a multirobot system

In this article, we propose a distributed control mechanism for a self-propelled, self-assembling robotic system that allows robots to form specific, connected morphologies. Global morphologies are grown using only local visual perception. Robots that are part of the connected entity indicate where new robots should attach to grow the local structure appropriately. We demonstrate the efficacy of the mechanism by letting groups of seven real robots self-assemble into four different morphologies: line, star, arrow, and rectangle.