Contents
21 July 2021
Vol 6, Issue 56
Vol 6, Issue 56
Special issue on swarm and aerial robotics
Research Articles
- From collections of independent, mindless robots to flexible, mobile, and directional superstructures
Self-organization of independent simple robots confined in a flexible scaffold gives rise to a mobile and flexible structure.
- Time-optimal planning for quadrotor waypoint flight
A solution for time-optimal quadrotor trajectory planning through optimization outperforms professional human pilots in racing.
About The Cover
ONLINE COVER Opening Doors. Robot swarms are designed to achieve complex global behaviors through simple local interactions between robots with very rudimentary sensing and locomotive abilities. Boudet et al. demonstrate that a swarm of primitive, centimeter-scale, vibrating robots bound by a deformable metal scaffold can give rise to directional motion. The mechanically coupled motion of the simple robots and the scaffold enable nontrivial space exploration in specifically configured environments. This month's cover is a photograph of a swarm of simple robots in a flexible membrane passing through a door. [CREDIT: HAMID KELLAY, JEAN FRANÇOIS BOUDET, BENJAMIN GORIN/UNIVERSITY OF BORDEAUX]
