Metamorphic Robots

ABSTRACT

Metamorphic robots with shape changing capabilities provide a powerful and flexible approach to complex tasks in space exploration. Such robots can autonomously and intelligently reconfigure their shape and size to accomplish missions that are difficult or impossible for robots with fixed shapes and configurations. In this paper we outline the vision of metamorphic robots for various tasks and discuss various technologies for making this vision possible. We also present approaches and evaluation criteria for robot/human interactions and discuss the significance and implications of this new concept and technology.

Metamorphic robots are robots that can self-reconfigure their own shape, size and configuration inorder to accomplish complex tasks in dynamic and uncertain environments. These systems claim to have many desirable properties including versatility, robustness and low cost. Each module has its own computer, a rich set of sensors, actuators and communication networks. However, the practical application outside of research has yet to be seen. One outstanding issue for such system is the increasing complexity for effectively programming a large distributed system with hundreds or even thousands of nodes in changing configuration. POLYBOT has been developed as its third generation.