Collective construction of dynamics structure: collaboration between semi-active blocks and simple robots

This paper describes a methodology to construct a dynamic structure by the interaction between intelligent blocks and simple robots. The block is intelligent enough to have a rule set and a counter value, and communicates with next blocks based on the rule set and counter value. The structure is formed by growing the chain of the blocks. Its growth direction is determined by the rule set and the counter value. Each robot just loads or unloads the block based on a simple algorithm. The blocks in this method are always attached or detached randomly from the structure. Dynamic structure, in which the local position is unstable but the global structure is stable, has a potential to be fault-tolerant or to be adaptive for environmental changes. In this paper, we describe the mechanism of our proposal and show some fundamental characteristics obtained by computer simulation.