Papers by Stephane Bonardi
Roombots—Towards decentralized reconfiguration with self-reconfiguring modular robotic metamodules
2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2010
This paper presents our work towards a decentralized reconfiguration strategy for self-reconfigur... more This paper presents our work towards a decentralized reconfiguration strategy for self-reconfiguring modular robots, assembling furniture-like structures from Roombots (RB) metamodules. We explore how reconfiguration by locomotion from a configuration A to a configuration B can be controlled in a distributed fashion. This is done using Roombots metamodules-two Roombots modules connected serially-that use broadcast signals, lookup tables of their movement
An experimental study on the role of compliant elements on the locomotion of the self-reconfigurable modular robots Roombots
2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013
ABSTRACT
Design and evaluation of a graphical iPad application for arranging adaptive furniture
2012 IEEE RO-MAN: The 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2012
Abstract We present the design and evaluation of an iPad application that will be used to operate... more Abstract We present the design and evaluation of an iPad application that will be used to operate the modular robots “Roombots”. Roombots are the building blocks for adaptive pieces of furniture. The application allows a user to arrange adaptive furniture within a room. We conducted a user study with 24 participants to evaluate our approach and to freely explore people's interaction. Data suggests that the ability to move with the tablet leads to a better precision of the furniture arrangement. No significant difference has been observed ...
Collaborative manipulation and transport of passive pieces using the self-reconfigurable modular robots roombots
2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013
ABSTRACT
Proceedings of the seventh annual ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '12, 2012
The video presents the first results of a Swiss-funded project focusing on symbiotic peer-to-peer... more The video presents the first results of a Swiss-funded project focusing on symbiotic peer-to-peer interaction and cooperation between humans and robot swarms. As a first step, we considered human-swarm interaction, and selected the use of hand gestures to let a human communicate with a swarm of relatively simple mobile robots. In our scenario, a hand gesture encodes a command, that the swarm will execute. The robots that we used are the foot-bots, developed in the Swarmanoid project [1].
Natural user interface for Roombots
The 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2014
Gait optimization for roombots modular robots — Matching simulation and reality
2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013
ABSTRACT The design of efficient locomotion gaits for robots with many degrees of freedom is chal... more ABSTRACT The design of efficient locomotion gaits for robots with many degrees of freedom is challenging and time consuming even if optimization techniques are applied. Control parameters can be found through optimization in two ways: (i) through online optimization where the performance of a robot is measured while trying different control parameters on the actual hardware and (ii) through offline optimization by simulating the robot's behavior with the help of models of the robot and its environment. In this paper, we present a hybrid optimization method that combines the best properties of online and offline optimization to efficiently find locomotion gaits for arbitrary structures. In comparison to pure online optimization, both the number of experiments using robotic hardware as well as the total time required for finding efficient locomotion gaits get highly reduced by running the major part of the optimization process in simulation using a cluster of processors. The presented example shows that even for robots with a low number of degrees of freedom the time required for optimization can be reduced by a factor of 2.5 to 30, at least, depending on how extensive the search for optimized control parameters should be. Time for hardware experiments becomes minimal. More importantly, gaits that can possibly damage the robotic hardware can be filtered before being tried in hardware. Yet in contrast to pure offline optimization, we reach well matched behavior that allows a direct transfer of locomotion gaits from simulation to hardware. This is because through a meta-optimization we adapt not only the locomotion parameters but also the parameters for simulation models of the robot and environment allowing for a good matching of the robot behavior in simulation and hardware. We validate the proposed hybrid optimization method on a structure composed of two Roombots modules with a total number of six degrees of freedom. Roombots are self-reconfigurable modular robots that can form arbitrary structures with many degrees of freedom through an integrated active connection mechanism.
The Challenges of Preference Elicitation
Uploads
Papers by Stephane Bonardi