Distributing devices, sensors and actuators, among several mobile robots increases flexibility while reducing overall costs compared to solutions based purely on a single general purpose robot. However, for effective cooperation between a group of robots, the challenges of effective management of devices and the communication between them must be addressed. This also represents a test for the allocation and planning of actual tasks. Applications range from effective exploration and/or monitoring environments, to rescue work. This solution is widely recognized that it will bring many benefits in the production process in SME companies.
Thus, intuitive use, easy to adapt to many different tasks, flexible dynamic structure can be changed easily. In view of this, it is also recognized that a substantial answer to the mentioned needs should forward the development of modular configurable robotic structures which also shall exhibit motion self-organizing properties, once assembled in the desired configuration. With the angles mentioned, this course will provide students with basic mechatronic concepts and related techniques that allow the reconstruction of modular robots; as well as internally distributed self-organizing control methods and related algorithms