Modular Robotics Lab (ModLab), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

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Subgroup of the GRASP Lab and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics Department

Website - modlabupenn.org

youtube.com/ckBot

Leader - Mark Yim

Projects and products:

Modboats, low-cost modular, self-reconfigurable robotic swimmers

SMORES-EP, modular robot

Piccolissimo, smallest self-powered flying vehicle

Hybrid Exploration Robot for Air and Land Deployment (H.E.R.A.L.D)

Persona, telepresence robot

SEAL Pack, versatile, portable, and rapidly deployable sea, air, and land robotic vehicle

Structure synthesis on-the-fly, FoamBot and CKBot modules

 

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Modlab Compiliation

Published on Nov 22, 2013

An assortment of project videos that came out of Modlab.

 

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Passive stability of MAVs Without Angular Momentum

Published on Jul 2, 2015

We modeled and built Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) that naturally hover without any sensing or control. These types of vehicles, called passively stabilized vehicles, can be made less complicated, more robust, and at lower cost with the addition of simple, yet carefully designed, stabilizer sails.

 

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Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart

Uploaded on Apr 23, 2008

A robot developed by roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania is made of modules that can recognise each other.

 

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Assembling Structures with Modular Robots - IROS17

Published on Oct 16, 2017

Recent work in the field of bio-inspired systems has introduced designs for modular robots that are able to assemble into structures (e.g., bridges, landing platforms, fences) using their bodies as the building components. Yet, it remains an open question as to how to program large swarms of robotic modules so that the assembly task is performed as efficiently as possible. Moreover, the problem of designing assembly algorithms is compounded by the scale of these systems, and the lack of centralized guidance in unstructured environments. The main contribution of this work is a decentralized algorithm to assemble structures with modular robots. Importantly, we coordinate the robots so that docking actions can be parallelized.

 

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ModQuad: The Flying Modular Structure that Self-Assembles in Midair

Published on Oct 16, 2017

We introduce ModQuad, a novel flying modular robotic structure that is able to self-assemble in midair and cooperatively fly. The structure is composed by agile flying modules that can easily move in a three dimensional environment. The module is based on a quadrotor platform within a cuboid frame which allows it to attach to other modules by matching vertical faces. Using this mechanism, a ModQuad swarm is able to rapidly assemble flying structures in midair using the robot bodies as building units.

 

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A flying gripper based on cuboid modular robots

Published on Oct 16, 2017

We present a novel flying modular platform capable of grasping and transporting objects. It is composed of four cooperative identical modules where each is based on a quadrotor within a cuboid frame with a docking mechanism. Pair of modules are able to fly independently and physically connect by matching their vertical edges forming a hinge. Four one degree of freedom (DOF) connections results in a one DOF four-bar linkage that can be used to grasp external objects.

 

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A Flying Gripper Based on Cuboid Modular Robots - ICRA 2018

Published on Mar 16, 2018

We present a novel flying modular platform capable of grasping and transporting objects. It is composed of four cooperative identical modules where each is based on a quadrotor within a cuboid frame with a docking mechanism. Pairs of modules are able to fly independently and physically connect by matching their vertical edges forming a hinge. Four one degree of freedom (DOF) connections results in a one DOF four-bar linkage that can be used to grasp external objects. In this paper, we propose a decentralized method that allows the Flying Gripper to control its position, attitude and aperture angle. In our experiments, we tested the hovering performance for different aperture angles and with a grasped object. The performance for a closing and opening motion was also verified.

 

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ModQuad: the flying modular structure that self-assembles in midair

Published on Oct 16, 2017

We introduce ModQuad, a novel flying modular robotic structure that is able to self-assemble in midair and cooperatively fly. The structure is composed by agile flying modules that can easily move in a three dimensional environment. The module is based on a quadrotor platform within a cuboid frame which allows it to attach to other modules by matching vertical faces. Using this mechanism, a ModQuad swarm is able to rapidly assemble flying structures in midair using the robot bodies as building units.

 

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ModQuad-Vi: a vision-based self-assembling modular quadrotor

Published on Mar 13, 2019

Flying modular robots have the potential to rapidly form temporary structures. In the literature, docking actions rely on external systems and indoor infrastructures for relative pose estimation. In contrast to related work, we provide local estimation during the self-assembly process to avoid dependency on external systems. In this paper, we introduce ModQuad-Vi, a flying modular robot that is aimed to operate
in outdoor environments. We propose a new robot design and vision-based docking method. Our design is based on a quadrotor platform with onboard computation and visual perception. Our control method is able to accurately align modules for docking actions. Additionally, we present the dynamics and a geometric controller for the aerial modular system. Experiments validate the vision-based docking method with successful results.