Playdough to Roombots: Towards a Novel Tangible User Interface for Self-reconfigurable Modular Robots

Mutlu, Mehmet; Hauser, Simon; Bernardino, Alexandre; Ijspeert, Auke Jan

doi:10.1109/icra.2018.8461248

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Different user interfaces with Roombots were already explored in the past, e.g. using Playdough to form structures [70] and an approach based on Virtual Reality (VR) [20], however these previous works could not be adapted to larger scale dynamic formations. The Playdough Unity 1 , a 3D animation software that often is used for creating video games.…”

Section: Graphical User Interface (Gui)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Roombots extended: Challenges in the next generation of self-reconfigurable modular robots and their application in adaptive and assistive furniture

Hauser

Mutlu

Léziart

et al. 2020

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

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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. We conclude with the remaining challenges and point out possible directions of research for the future of adaptive and assistive furniture with Roombots.

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Section: Graphical User Interface (Gui)mentioning

confidence: 99%