The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is a subsidiary of Xerox Corporation. One of its most intriguing areas of study is "modular reconfigurable robotics," which is a technology that allows a robot to take itself apart and put itself back together again in a new form. This lets the robot customize its design for a given task. Several different models of robots have been constructed at the PARC, and this Web site describes how they were built and how they function. There is a large collection of video clips that show each of the robots in operation, including one of a robot riding a tricycle. Two Java simulation programs can be downloaded that demonstrate the control systems of two of the PARC models. A long list of publication titles with abstracts is given, and the full text is available for a few of them.
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