Autonomous Construction

Stéphane Magnenat, Philippe Retornaz, Florian Vaussard, Francesco Mondada

Introduction

Autonomous construction is challenging for robotics both at the mechatronic and at the control levels. At the mechatronic level, it requires manipulators with many degrees of freedom. At the control level, autonomous construction mixes complex low-level actions, such as adding new elements to a structure, with a high-level cognitive behaviour, such as reasoning on a course of action to avoid situations that prevent the completion of the structure.

The marXbot robot is well-suited tools to study autonomous construction. As it is modular, we can fit it with different manipulation capabilities. Moreover, as the robot is small, neither the robot nor the built structures are dangereous. This allows to efficiently explore different construction modalities.

Videos

A video presenting the whole system:

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