Collective Robotic Terrain Transformation

Coordination of swarms of robots with minimal onboard capabilities to build terrains with complex shapes.

Summary

• Developed an error-tolerant distributed algorithm based on optimal transport theory to coordinate a swarm of minimalistic robots to build complex continuous terrains under motion noise and constraints.
• Developed a dynamical system model of the robot’s interaction with granular material based on real data.
• Built a lightweight simulator in Python based on the proposed model that drastically reduces the computation time of simulating large-scale multi-robot construction with granular material.