A near-optimal dynamic power sharing scheme for self-reconfigurable modular robots

This paper proposes a dynamic and near-optimal power sharing mechanism for self-reconfigurable modular robots that successfully extends the operating time of sets of connected modules. The proposed method achieves near-optimal results even when each module only knows the power status of its immediate neighbors (those to which it is directly connected) rather than the power status of every module in the robotic system. The proposed method is validated in physics-based simulation environments and will be implemented on real robotic hardware developed at the Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory at the University of Southern California. It is also compared with current state-of-the-art power sharing mechanisms. Simulated results show that the proposed method allows for longer operation time than with alternative state-of-the-art methods.