An amoeboid modular robot that exhibits real-time adaptive reconfiguration

This paper discusses experimental verifications of a two-dimensional modular robot called ¿Slimebot¿, consisting of many identical modules, each of which has simple motile functions. We have so far investigated a fully decentralized algorithm able to control the morphology of the modular robot in real-time according to the environment encountered. One of the most significant features of our approach is that we explicitly exploit ¿emergent phenomena¿ stemming from the interplay between control and mechanical systems. In order to verify our proposed control scheme, we have constructed real physical Slimebot. Experiments with 10 modules suggest that this robot exhibits significant abilities, i.e., adaptivity, scalability, and fault tolerance.