Robohub.org
 

Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2012)


by
16 December 2012



share this:

My colleague Nils Napp from Radhika Nagpal‘s lab at Harvard attended the DARS symposium this year and agreed to share some highlights with us.

This time around, the biannual Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) was at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Maryland. The single track featured a great lineup of invited and technical talks. For example, Prof. Gracias gave a fascinating keynote talk about his group’s work in self-folding microstructures and progress toward making swarms of untethered micro-robots. They designed tiny metal grippers that can perform biopsies in difficult-to-reach areas and be retrieved in bulk via a magnet.

A striking aspect of the diverse (and generally fantastic) technical program was that the exotic Brazil-nut effect kept surfacing. With random agitation granular mixtures of different sized particles spontaneously separate, even against gravity! Larger particles usually end up on top: a fact that can readily be exploited for picking out large brazil-nuts from a mixture that includes less desirable varieties. Applied to robots, this effect can be used to design shockingly simple motion strategies to transport relatively large objects or sort robots.

K. Sugawara, D. Reishus, N. Correll (2012): Object Transportation by Granular Convection Using Swarm Robots. (download paper)

Gauci M., Chen J., Dodd T.J., and Groß R. Evolving Aggregation Behaviors in Multi-Robot Systems with Binary Sensors. (download paper)

As a special treat during the poster session, students from Sarah Bergbreiter’s group at the University of Maryland demoed some really neat, really small, and (comparatively) really fast mini-robots called TinyTeRPs.

Also, mark your calendars for 2014 when DARS will be in Korea!

More on the author: Nils Napp works on distributed robotic construction using iterative amorphous depositions. You might have seen his foam-depositing robot on the Automaton Blog or Robohub. At DARS he presented a paper to reliably build ramps in unstructured environments. The idea is to exploit the low-level mechanical feedback of compliant building materials to make construction more robust. As a result, relatively simple local strategies for interacting with irregularly shaped, partially built structures can give rise to robust, adaptive global properties.



tags: ,


Sabine Hauert is President of Robohub and Associate Professor at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory
Sabine Hauert is President of Robohub and Associate Professor at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory





Related posts :



Robot Talk Episode 121 – Adaptable robots for the home, with Lerrel Pinto

  16 May 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Lerrel Pinto from New York University about using machine learning to train robots to adapt to new environments.

What’s coming up at #ICRA2025?

  16 May 2025
Find out what's in store at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, which will take place from 19-23 May.

Robot see, robot do: System learns after watching how-tos

  14 May 2025
Researchers have developed a new robotic framework that allows robots to learn tasks by watching a how-to video

AI-powered robots help tackle Europe’s growing e-waste problem

  12 May 2025
EU-funded researchers have developed adaptable robots that could transform the way we recycle electronic waste, benefiting both the environment and the economy.

Robot Talk Episode 120 – Evolving robots to explore other planets, with Emma Hart

  09 May 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Emma Hart from Edinburgh Napier University about algorithms that 'evolve' better robot designs and control systems.

Robot Talk Episode 119 – Robotics for small manufacturers, with Will Kinghorn

  02 May 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Will Kinghorn from Made Smarter about how to increase adoption of new tech by small manufacturers.

Multi-agent path finding in continuous environments

  01 May 2025
How can a group of agents minimise their journey length whilst avoiding collisions?

Interview with Yuki Mitsufuji: Improving AI image generation

  29 Apr 2025
Find out about two pieces of research tackling different aspects of image generation.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence