From DRLWiki
The Distributed Robotics Laboratory began as the Dartmouth Robotics Laboratory in the Computer Science Department at Dartmouth College. There the Molecule and Crystal robots were developed, along with several other robot systems including the Inchworm mobile robot, a desktop paper manipulation robot, and a set of robots which cooperated to manipulate furniture. The lab moved to MIT CSAIL in 2004 when our PI Daniela Rus became a professor in the EECS department at MIT. We are currently located on the third floor of the Stata Center, room 32-376.
Our work spans areas including modular and self-reconfiguring robots, distributed algorithms and systems of self-organizing robots, networks of robots and sensors for first-responders, mobile sensor networks, animals and robots, cooperative underwater robotics, desktop robotics, and forming, moving, and navigating sparse 2D and 3D structures.
Contents for This Page |
Projects
  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |
 |  |
Collaborative Projects
 |
News
- November 3, 2009 --- The programmable matter Pebbles and Miche projects were featured in IEEE Spectrum Special Report: Robots for Real
- December 2, 2008 --- The animal modeling and control project was featured in Fortune
- November 24, 2008 --- The Distributed Robotic Garden was featured in the New York Times.
- July 9, 2008 -- Our paper "Social Control of Herd Animals by Integration of Artificially Controlled Congeners" received the Best Paper Award at the
10th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB), Osaka, Japan.
- July 2, 2008 -- An article about our animals and robots project appeared in the The Economist.
- June 30, 2008 -- An article about our animals and robots project appeared in the Boston Globe.
- June 6, 2008 -- Our animals and robots project is featured on the USDA Agricultural Research Service website.
- December 10, 2007 -- Our robot Shady is featured on the AT&T Tech Channel
- December 3, 2005 -- Our robot AMOUR swam for malaria and raised money for 272 mosquito nets.
- Dartmouth News -- September 14, 2005: Dartmouth researchers build world's smallest mobile robot
- NSF Press Release 04-121 -- September 16, 2004: Proving That Shape-Shifting Robots Can Get a Move On
- Boston Globe -- December 28, 2003: Mother of Invention: Virtual cow fences and self-reconfiguring automatons are just two of MIT roboticist Daniela Rus's futuristic visions
Funding
Support for the lab is provided by
- Boeing -- Distributed Control and Learning in Networked Robot Systems
- DARPA
- Intel
- National Science Foundation
- Magswitch
Address, Contact, and Directions
To contact us by email, select a person.
Distributed Robotics Lab MIT CSAIL 32 Vassar Street, 32-376 Cambridge, MA 02139
Telephone: 617-253-6532 Fax: 617-253-6849
Walking Directions: Use the entrance nearest the corner of Vassar and Main Streets (Gates entrance). Take the stairs on your left up to third floor or proceed to the elevators on your right and go to the third floor. Continue walking past the stairway to the fourth floor and enter the lab.
