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 1 Projects 2 Collaborative Projects 3 News 4 Funding 5 Address, Contact, and Directions

Projects

Cow Herding with Virtual Fences	Guiding People and Robots with Sensor Networks	Adaptive Architectures for Modular Robots	Distributed Control Algorithms for Networked Mobile Robots with Sensory Feedback	Distributed Manipulation with Touch Sensitive Rope
AMOUR (Autonomous Modular Optical Underwater Robot)	Modular Self-Disassembly	The Self-Reconfiguring Molecule Robot	The Self-Reconfiguring Crystal Robot	Generic Distributed Self-Reconfiguration Algorithms with Cellular Automata
Modular Reconfiguring Structures with Shady3D	Vertical Truss Climbing with Shady	Modular Reconfiguring Structures with MultiShady	The Inchworm Robot for Navigating 3D Steel Web Environments	Paper Manipulator
Visolate: Voronoi Toolpaths for PCB Mechanical Etch	Early Warning System for River Flood Detection	An accurate Localization System for Indoor Environments	Traffic Information System

Collaborative Projects

EFRI	Programmable Matter

News

• 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.

Copyright © 2006 MIT