Title: Autonomous Self-reconfigurable Modular robots
Students: 4 ECE students
Advisors: Yanfei Liu (ECE, Primary Advisor), Carlos Pomalaza-Ráez (EE), John C Licato (CS),
Zhuming Bi (ME)
Figure 1. An example of self-reconfigurable modular robots
Project Description:
The goal of this project is to develop a number of robotic modules that are selfreconfigurable. The robotic modules should be able to self-reconfigure themselves into at
least two configurations in fully autonomous mode, i.e. the modules are not remotely
controlled when they are self-configuring. The modules will be equipped with sensors to
become aware of the nature of their surrounding.
The software development environment should be open source and allow users to program
the robot with commonly used high-level programming languages. The modular robots
should also be able to be controlled externally with commands sent wirelessly using a
standard communications protocol, i.e. IEEE 802.11.
Note: A team of 2 or 3 Computer Science students will participate in the second semester
(Fall 2016) and use this for their senior design project. The CS students main task will be to
provide the modules with the capability to use the data from the sensors and enable the
autonomous self-reconfiguration.