Second CONRO prototype - SOFTWARE based on Hormones
Permission to use these images and movies is granted free of charge as long as the
credit line "USC Information Sciences Institute" is included.
This page shows examples of Hormone-based Distributed Control mechanism, developed by Wei-Min Shen and his students Yimin Lu, Behnam Salemi, and Yuankai Wang. Hormones are special tokens for inter-agent communication and control in distributed systems.
Implementation
mov (6.0 Mb), mpg
(3.7 Mb).
09/99
This video shows the first motions produced by hormones on an early version of the modules.
The robot is a small snake of 4 modules.
These early modules didn't have pins on their passive connectors yet and thus, the
modules are locked to each other using U-shape slabs of aluminum.
Push up
mov (5.6 Mb), mpg
(3.0 Mb).
Push down
mov (5.0 Mb), mpg
(2.9 Mb).
10/99
Exercise time.. the little hexapod does some push-ups in preparation for the whats to come.
Self FlipOver Actions
mov (48 Mb), mpg
(17 Mb).
10/2000
If you push me down, I'll get back to you!
Autonomous Caterpillar Move (Side View)
mov (21 Mb),
mpg (23 Mb).
10/2000
A totally autonomous 3-module CONRO robot moving as a caterpillar.
Autonomous Caterpillar Move (Top View)
mov (21 Mb),
mpg (23 Mb).
10/2000
A totally autonomous 3-module CONRO robot moving as a caterpillar.
Prepare to form a loop.
mov (8 Mb),
mpg (8 Mb).
10/2000
A snake move its tail close to its head in order to dock them together to form a loop.
Alignment and Docking.
mov (62 Mb),
mpg (62 Mb).
10/2000
A snake's tail and head modules use their infrared sensors to align each other and dock together use pins and holes/latches.
[home]
[Project Information]
[Related Information]
[1st Prototype]
[2nd Prototype (Hardware)]
[2nd Prototype (Software-Hormones)]
[2nd Prototype (Software-Remote host)]
Please, let us know of any problems that you find viewing these pages
by mailing to the CONRO Webmaster .