Roombots: Self-reconfigurable modular robots for adaptive and assistive furniture

This work presents a series of demonstrations of our self-reconfigurable modular robots (SRMR) ``Roombots'' in the context of adaptive and assistive furniture. In literature, simulations are often ahead of what currently can be demonstrated in hardware with such systems due to significant challenges in transferring them to the real world. Here, we describe how Roombots tackled these difficulties in real hardware and focus qualitatively on selected hardware experiments rather than on quantitative measurements (in hardware and simulation) to showcase the many possibilities of an SRMR. We envision Roombots to be used in our living space and define five key tasks that such a system must possess. Consequently, we demonstrate these tasks, including self-reconfiguration with 12 modules (36 Degrees of Freedom), autonomously moving furniture, object manipulation and gripping capabilities, human-module-interaction and the development of an easy-to-use user interface.
Publication: S. Hauser, M. Mutlu, P.-A. Léziart, H. Khodr, A. Bernardino, A.J. Ijspeert, "Roombots extended: Challenges in the next generation of self-reconfigurable modular robots and their application in adaptive and assistive furniture", Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 127 (2020): 103467
Link: doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2020....

[@ricomockel]

This is like a dream is becoming true. Well done!

[@MaxBrix]

Finally I won't have to reconfigure my furniture manually every time I want to sit down.

[@giovanniherrera5615]

These are pretty cool 👍

[@googleyoutubechannel8554]

Only requires you to hire one full time minder-human! J/K keep it up, super cool and best implementation of the ol 'robot cubes assemble!' concept I've seen to date.

[@WillTheThrillYT]

Kinda like microbots in Big Hero 6

[@MaksymCzech]

Imagine what it would be like to live in society governed by Roombots...

[@t-wongg3773]

Just imagine walking through an ikea and thousands of these things are robbing the store XD

[@Engieanimations]

Big hero 6

[@sitharasithu6665]

How you develop this reconfigurable...

[@dimacherepovskyi8600]

Engineering of macro scale objects is obsolete. I imagine that only those robots may be able to make the progress going.

[@Hgulix62]

The future of robotics is small robots merging together into big structures

[@Gianluca-Vacchi]

By and large - useless nonsense. Sorry for the truth.

[@BedOfNettles]

Only truth here is that you have no perspective or imagination 😉

[@Gianluca-Vacchi]

@@BedOfNettles I have a fairly developed imagination and an IQ close to genius. And I'm 146% sure that you won't be able to find a practical use for this nonsense.

[@cvspvr]

@@Gianluca-Vacchi what's your iq?

[@Gianluca-Vacchi]

@@cvspvr You have an extremely low. I wrote above what my IQ level is.

[@trungkiennguyen7655]

Have more modules (with different abilities, e.g: robotic hand, robotic fingers, camera, broom stick)
which can be mounted to these dynamic structure, have those dynamic structure constantly change shape to achieve smooth (emough) motions with those handy modules
Robot that can walk around your house, turn the light off, check the temperature, turn the stove off, lock the door from the inside.