ModRED |University of Nebraska at Omaha | 2011-2014

The objective of the ModRED (Modular Robot for Exploration and Discovery) project is to improve existing techniques for automated exploring of initially unknown or partially-known environments such as extra-terrestrial surfaces on the Moon or Mars or terrestrial regions with limited accessibility such as in urban search and rescue scenarios.

Official ModRED website.

• The first direction pursues an advanced design of a highly dexterous Modular Robot for Exploration and Discovery.

• The second research direction is to develop technologies to autonomously control the configuration and navigation of ModRED.

We investigate techniques that allow ModRED to monitor its own performance and dynamically adjust its shape and gait pattern after encountering occlusions in its path, so that it can continue its exploration of the environment efficiently while reducing its energy consumption and the time required to complete the exploration operation. We propose to validate our research results using theoretical analyses, simulation experiments and tests on the physical ModRED system.