SMORES – ModLab

A Quadratic Programming Approach to Manipulation in Real Time

by Chao LiuCKbot, Modular Robots, SMORES July 7, 2021October 15, 2023168 Comments

Manipulation tasks usually involve the control of redundant robots to reach large workspaces while avoiding obstacles and satisfying other constraints. This results in motion planning in high-dimensional space. In addition, whole-body manipulation tasks using multi-limbed robots may need the control of more than one manipulators. Modular robots can be used to construct many useful morphologies …

Parallel Self-assembly with SMORES-EP

by Chao LiuModular Robots, SMORES April 29, 2020January 3, 202314 Comments

It is common in nature that goups of individuals can form a variety of structures in order to overcome the limited capability of each individual, especially for insects who often need to collaborate in large groups to finish tasks. This collective intelligence is important to modular robots which are composed of numerous simple building blocks, …

A Distributed Reconfiguration Planning for Modular Robots

by Chao LiuModular Robots, SMORES July 23, 2019October 2, 201912 Comments

Self-reconfigurable modular robots are usually composed of multiple modules with uniform docking interfaces that can be transformed into different configurations by themselves. The reconfiguration planning problem is finding what sequence of reconfiguration actions are required for one arrangement of modules to transform into another. We present a novel reconfiguration planning algorithm for modular robots. The …