Computing with Modular Robots
This work addresses the challenge of building experimental computing devices with modular robots, but it is incremental as it applies existing pattern-based concepts to a new robotic platform.
The authors tackled the problem of implementing unconventional computing circuits using modular robots, specifically Cubelets, by propagating signals in parallel and asynchronously, resulting in a working prototype of a one-bit full adder.
Propagating patterns are used to transfer and process information in chemical and physical prototypes of unconventional computing devices. Logical values are represented by fronts of traveling diffusive, trigger or phase waves. We apply this concept of pattern based computation to develop experimental prototypes of computing circuits implemented in small modular robots. In the experimental prototypes the modular robots Cubelets are concatenated into channels and junction. The structures developed by Cubelets propagate signals in parallel and asynchronously. The approach is illustrated with a working circuit of a one-bit full adder. Complementarily a formalization of these constructions are developed across Sleptsov nets. Finally, a perspective to swarm dynamics is discussed.