Robot Matter
Simple robots can come together to solve complex problems
through physical interactions that share information and influence
other robots. Here, we look at how we can engineer both the individual robot
and the collective to try to get robots that can move, interact, and solve problems.
Design and control of a vibratory motile robot
The ability for small-scale robots to move along directed pathways of locomotion is necessary in swarm and collective systems for navigation, coordination, and task execution, particularly. In this work, we introduce a minimal vibratory robot capable of directional control using only a single eccentric rotating mass (ERM) motor, a rotary encoder, and a low-resource microcontroller. We encode a software-defined asymmetry by modulating angular velocity as a function of motor rotation angle to enable arbitrary planar motion without physical design asymmetries.