Related papers: Hardness of Reconfiguring Robot Swarms with Unifor…
We present a method for the control of robot swarms using two subsets of robots: a larger group of simple, oblivious robots (which we call the workers) that is governed by simple local attraction forces, and a smaller group (the guides)…
We investigate the transport and separation of overdamped particles under the action of a uniform external force in a two-dimensional periodic energy landscape. Exact results are obtained for the deterministic transport in a square lattice…
We present an algorithm determining where to relocate objects inside a cluttered and confined space while rearranging objects to retrieve a target object. Although methods that decide what to remove have been proposed, planning for the…
In this paper we theoretically investigate underlying assumptions that have been used for designing adaptive particle swarm optimization algorithms in the past years. We relate these assumptions to the movement patterns of particles…
The limited energy capacity of individual robotic agents in a swarm often limits the possible cooperative tasks they can perform. In this work, we investigate the problem of covering an unknown connected grid environment (e.g. a maze or…
We study an elementary problem of the topological robotics: collective motion of a set of $n$ distinct particles which one has to move from an initial configuration to a final configuration, with the requirement that no collisions occur in…
In micro- and nano-scale systems, particles can be moved by using an external force like gravity or a magnetic field. In the presence of adhesive particles that can attach to each other, the challenge is to decide whether a shape is…
Particle-based dynamic occupancy maps were proposed in recent years to model the obstacles in dynamic environments. Current particle-based maps describe the occupancy status in discrete grid form and suffer from the grid size problem,…
We investigate motion planning algorithms for the assembly of shapes in the \emph{tilt model} in which unit-square tiles move in a grid world under the influence of uniform external forces and self-assemble according to certain rules. We…
We consider the problem of completely covering an unknown discrete environment with a swarm of asynchronous, frequently-crashing autonomous mobile robots. We represent the environment by a discrete graph, and task the robots with occupying…
We introduce and analyze a model for self-reconfigurable robots made up of unit-cube modules. Compared to past models, our model aims to newly capture two important practical aspects of real-world robots. First, modules often do not occupy…
In the modular robot reconfiguration problem, we are given $n$ cube-shaped modules (or robots) as well as two configurations, i.e., placements of the $n$ modules so that their union is face-connected. The goal is to find a sequence of moves…
Object rearrangement is a widely-applicable and challenging task for robots. Geometric constraints must be carefully examined to avoid collisions and combinatorial issues arise as the number of objects increases. This work studies the…
The pebble-motion on graphs is a subcategory of multi-agent pathfinding problems dealing with moving multiple pebble-like objects from a node to a node in a graph with a constraint that only one pebble can occupy one node at a given time.…
The gathering over meeting nodes problem asks the robots to gather at one of the pre-defined meeting nodes. The robots are deployed on the nodes of an anonymous two-dimensional infinite grid which has a subset of nodes marked as meeting…
We give both efficient algorithms and hardness results for reconfiguring between two connected configurations of modules in the hexagonal grid. The reconfiguration moves that we consider are "pivots", where a hexagonal module rotates around…
In Coordinated Motion Planning (CMP), we are given a rectangular-grid on which $k$ robots occupy $k$ distinct starting gridpoints and need to reach $k$ distinct destination gridpoints. In each time step, any robot may move to a neighboring…
We present an algorithm that produces a plan for relocating obstacles in order to grasp a target in clutter by a robotic manipulator without collisions. We consider configurations where objects are densely populated in a constrained and…
We investigate the steady-state organisation of active particles residing on an interface. Particle activity induces interface deformations, while the local shape of the interface guides particle movement. We consider multiple species of…
We study the problem of motion planning for a collection of $n$ labeled unit disc robots in a polygonal environment. We assume that the robots have revolving areas around their start and final positions: that each start and each final is…