Fig. 3: Complex shape assembly by the proposed strategy.
From: Mean-shift exploration in shape assembly of robot swarms
a Experimental results of 50 real Rainbow robots assembling a complex snowflake shape. The shape-exploring control term is necessary since the shape assembly task would fail in the absence of the term as shown in the rightmost subfigure. b Numerical simulation of 16 robots assembling a ring shape starting from an initial linear configuration. Both the shape-exploring and shape-entering control terms are necessary since shape assembly would fail in the absence of either of them. c Experimental results of 50 real Rainbow robots assembling different shapes in a sequence. The distributed negotiation process among the robots converges fast. The shape switches smoothly due to the ability of active exploration and independence of goal assignment of the proposed strategy. See Supplementary Movies 1 and 2.
