The first thing you’ll hit is the sheer complexity of a true reconfigurable link—every joint has to be a plug‑and‑play circuit, so the connectors, the motor drives, the sensors all need to survive repeated mating. Then there’s power: you can’t just run a single supply off‑the‑shelf; you need a distributed power bus that balances load as the topology shifts. Communication is another beast—if the units are physically swapping positions, the network topology changes every few seconds, so you need a self‑healing protocol that can keep the swarm in sync without dropping packets. Control logic becomes a nightmare: each module must decide locally what to do, but also respect the global objective, and that’s hard when the geometry keeps changing. Finally, safety: a robot that rewires itself has to guarantee that a mis‑wired joint can’t slam someone or itself into a dead‑end. In short, you’re looking at a multi‑disciplinary nightmare of mechanical, electrical, and software reliability that almost everyone skips over because it’s a hard problem to solve.

Start small, just one pair of modules. Get a reliable mechanical snap‑fit that can mate and dis‑mate cleanly, then wire a tiny motor and a current sensor to it. Make the joint a “plug‑and‑play” on the power bus and see if you can keep it running when you pull it out and put it back on a different spot. That will surface the first power‑balance headache. Once the joint is stable, drop in a basic communication stub—just a few wires and a serial link—so the two parts can agree on a state before they connect. No fancy networking, just enough to make sure they’re in sync when they touch. After you nail that, think about safety in layers. First, limit the torque and speed mechanically, then add a watchdog that cuts power if the joint tries to pull too hard. Add redundancy, like a second, independent sense of position, so you don’t have to trust a single sensor that could be wrong when the geometry changes. Only after the joint is a dependable, safe unit should you begin to stack more modules and let the swarm “gossip.” Each layer should add a single function—first the power bus, then the network, then the reconfiguration logic. Keep the scope tight, iterate, and watch out for the chaos party you mentioned; it starts with a single mis‑wired joint and grows from there.

That’s the right mindset—tight scope, iterative tests, and a hard‑wired fail‑safe. A single mis‑wired joint is a low‑hanging fruit if you catch it early, so put a quick latch on the mechanical side and a watchdog on the firmware. Once the pair is immune to wear and the power bus is stable, the networking layer will just be another layer of plumbing. Keep the tests simple, watch the torque curves, and remember that the first failure will often expose the biggest design flaw. Stay patient, and the swarm will eventually learn to gossip without collapsing.