Modular Bots Share 'Nervous System' to Autonomously Merge and Split

An international team of researchers from universities in Lisbon, Brussels, and Switzerland have created a 'nervous system for robots' that allows a group of modular robots to merge to form larger bodies with a single centralized controller, split into separate bodies with independent controllers, and self-heal by removing or replacing malfunctioning body parts. This work, recently published in Nature Communications  , takes researchers closer to robots that can autonomously change their size, form, and function.