Roombots, Biorobotics Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

A simulation of Auke Jan Ijspeert's Roombots transforming first into a side table, then into a quadruped-like walking side table.

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Biorobotics Laboratory, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

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The Roombot was developed by the EPFL and is designed to self-assemble into different forms of furniture.

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The Roombot was developed by the EPFL and is designed to self-assemble into different forms of furniture.

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EPFL scientists are creating futuristic furniture that can move around and autonomously change its shape. This innovation may prove useful to support disabled individuals.

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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.

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Roombots are modular robots made by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) that can self-assemble to make, move and enhance furniture.

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