Constraint-aware coordinated construction of generic structures

Abstract

This paper presents a constraint-aware decentralized approach to construction with teams of robots. We present an extension to existing work on a distributed controller for robotic construction of simple structures. Our previous work described a set of adaptive algorithms for constructing truss structures given a target geometry using continuous and graph-based equal-mass partitioning [1], [2]. Using this work as a foundation, we present an algorithm which performs construction tasks and conforms to physical constraints while considering those constraints to parallelize tasks. This is accomplished by defining a mass function which reflects the priority of part placement and prevents physically impossible states. This mass function generates a set of pointmasses in ℝn, and we present a novel algorithm for finding a locally optimal, equal-mass, convex tessellation of such a set.