Utilizing the full potential of a new flexible platform in modular self-reconfigurable mobile robotics

In this paper we show the challenges arising from the existence of multi mordular robotics. The hardware developed within the SYMBRION and REPLICATOR projects aims at the creation of a new platform being capable of acting as single robots, as a swarm of those or even of docking to each other and thereby creating a larger organism. This organism will be able to take advantage of the combined capabilities of the single robots. This includes the energy sources as well as computing power and sensors. The electronics design implemented in the projects allows to employ arbitrary topologies of the data bus without having to take care of the role each robot will fill within an organism. From the software point of view this provides an enormous flexibility, but also raises new challenges. Being flexible in terms of topology means not being aware of the actual topology implicitly. Therefore new mechanisms are needed to provide the high-level controllers with the necessary information. In this paper we will discuss some of these newly introduced capabilities as well as the according new challenges resulting out of them. We start by pointing out the hardware design principles. This includes the main-CPU which is a Blackfin DSP running μClinux as its operating system. Afterwards the most important consequences for the consecutive software are discussed.