Abstract 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. We conclude with the remaining challenges and point out possible directions of research for the future of adaptive and assistive furniture with Roombots.

中文翻译：

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Roombots 扩展：下一代自重构模块化机器人的挑战及其在自适应和辅助家具中的应用

摘要 这项工作在自适应和辅助家具的背景下展示了我们的自重构模块化机器人（SRMR）“Roombots”的一系列演示。在文献中，由于在将它们转移到现实世界方面存在重大挑战，因此模拟通常领先于目前可以在具有此类系统的硬件中展示的内容。在这里，我们描述了 Roombots 如何在实际硬件中解决这些困难，并定性地关注选定的硬件实验，而不是定量测量（硬件和模拟），以展示 SRMR 的许多可能性。我们设想在我们的生活空间中使用 Roombot，并定义了这样一个系统必须具备的五个关键任务。因此，我们展示了这些任务，包括使用 12 个模块（36 个自由度）进行自我重新配置、自主移动家具、对象操作和抓取能力、人机交互以及易于使用的用户界面的开发。我们总结了剩余的挑战，并指出了 Roombots 自适应和辅助家具未来可能的研究方向。