Termes

Collective Construction of 3D Structures by Robots of Many Kinds!

Termite mounds can be towering, complex structures on the scale of several meters,with complicated functional architectures that include features such as ventilation systems and humidity regulation. The architects are vast numbers of simple insects on the scale of millimeters, working with no centralized control or preplanning. Yet these animals achieve tremendous complexity, parallelism and robustness, from individuals that are small, simple, and expendable. How swarms of social insects build the structures they do is a fascinating topic not fully understood. Engineering offers a complementary problem: How could you program an artificial robotic swarm to build a particular structure?

Our group studies how this can be achieved. We combine ideas from swarm intelligence and programmable self-assembly, to create algorithms, theory, and robot designs.

We have developed a Family of Decentralized Algorithms by which simple robots -- without wireless communication or GPS/localization -- can cooperate to build a large classes of user-specified structures by sensing and modifying their environment like termites (bio-inspired "stigmergy" coordination) (e.g. ICRA 2006, IJRR 2008, DARS 2012).
We have also developed many Robotic Platforms, for example, block-carrying climbing robots that can build modular block structures much larger than themselves (Science 2014, cover article), and soft-material-depositing robots that can build in unstructured environments (ICRA 2014).
Most recently, we are collaborating with biologists to study and model the mound-building termites in Namibia (see Biological collectives page for recent publications).

Collective construction has many important potential civilian applications, from the construction of human habitats to containments or support structures in disaster areas. It also is a difficult challenge for robotics and poses many interesting challenges in mechanical design, manipulation, autonomy, and multi-robot coordination. Biological builders, from termites to beavers, have many lessons for roboticists.

Termes Robots long stairs (photo by Eliza Grinnell)

PEOPLE: Kirstin Petersen (now faculty@Cornell), Nils Napp (now faculty@Cornell), Justin Werfel (now Research Scientist @ Wyss), Radhika Nagpal and many great undergrads and collaborators.

PRESS AND MEDIA

Movies: Collective Construction YouTube Channel

The Termes Robots are on the cover of Science
Termite-inspired Robots, Cover Article, SCIENCE, Feb 2014
with Perspective by Prof. Korb
and in Science Top 10 breakthroughs for 2014

Lots of great media coverage!
Science Press Release, Wyss/Harvard Press Release
Boston Globe Article, BBC News article,
Gazette, National Geographic, Discover Magazine
Videos/Podcasts
National Geographic Video
NPR "All Things Considered", This is Genius Video (ITN UK) , Reuters TV Interview
MUSEUM EXHIBIT!
London Science Museum (2014), New Zealand Science Museum (2017)

Publications

Kirstin Petersen and Radhika Nagpal. 2017. “Complex Design by Simple Robots: A Collective Embodied Intelligence Approach to Construction.” Architectural Design, Special Issue: Autonomous Assembly: Designing for a New Era of Collective Construction, 87, 4, Pp. 44-49.Abstract
Nature's builders – from termites to beavers – offer a model of collective intelligence that can inspire robotic construction. Kirstin Petersen, Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and Radhika Nagpal, Professor in Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, describe several recent projects in this field that they have been involved in, both separately and collaboratively.
Justin Werfel, Kirstin Petersen, and Radhika Nagpal. 2014. “Designing Collective Behavior in a Termite-Inspired Robot Construction Team.” Science, 343, 6172.Abstract
Complex systems are characterized by many independent components whose low-level actions produce collective high-level results. Predicting high-level results given low-level rules is a key open challenge; the inverse problem, finding low-level rules that give specific outcomes, is in general still less understood. We present a multi-agent construction system inspired by mound-building termites, solving such an inverse problem. A user specifies a desired structure, and the system automatically generates low-level rules for independent climbing robots that guarantee production of that structure. Robots use only local sensing and coordinate their activity via the shared environment. We demonstrate the approach via a physical realization with three autonomous climbing robots limited to onboard sensing. This work advances the aim of engineering complex systems that achieve specific human-designed goals.
PDF (Front Cover) - Supplement and Movies - Perspective - Science Top10
Kirstin Petersen, Radhika Nagpal, and Justin Werfel. 2011. “TERMES: An Autonomous Robotic System for Three-Dimensional Collective Construction.” In Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS).
Justin Werfel, Kirstin Petersen, and Radhika Nagpal. 2011. “Distributed Multi-Robot Algorithms for the TERMES 3D Collective Construction System.” In Modular Robotics Workshop, Intl. Conference on Robots and Systems (IROS). Publisher's Version
Nils Napp and Radhika Nagpal. 2014. “Robotic Construction of Arbitrary Shapes with Amorphous Materials.” In IEEE Intl. Conf on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). (pdf)
Nils Napp and Radhika Nagpal. 2012. “Distributed Amorphous Ramp Construction in Unstructured Environments.” In Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS). (pdf)
Nils Napp, Olive Rappoli, Jessica Wu, and Radhika Nagpal. 2012. “Materials and Mechanisms for Amorphous Robotic Construction.” In IEEE Intl. Conference on Robots and Systems (IROS). (pdf)
Justin Werfel and Radhika Nagpal. 2008. “Three-dimensional construction with mobile robots and modular blocks.” International Journal of Robotics Research, 27, 3-4, Pp. 463-479. Publisher's Version
Justin Werfel, Donald Ingber, and Radhika Nagpal. 2007. “Collective Construction of Environmentally-adaptive Structures.” In IEEE Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). Publisher's Version
Justin Werfel, Yaneer Bar-Yam, Daniela Rus, and Radhika and Nagpal. 2006. “Distributed Construction by Mobile Robots with Enhanced Building Blocks.” In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Publisher's Version
Justin Werfel and Radhika Nagpal. 2006. “Extended Stigmergy in Collective Construction.” IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21, 2, Pp. 20-28. Publisher's Version
Crystal Schuil, Matthew Valente, Justin Werfel, and Radhika Nagpal. 2006. “Collective Construction Using Lego Robots.” In Robot Exhibition, National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Publisher's Version
Justin Werfel, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Radhika Nagpal. 2005. “Building Patterned Structures with Robot Swarms.” In Intl. Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI '05). Publisher's Version

Self-Organizing Systems Research Group

Publications