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We study an extensive class of movement minimization problems which arise from many practical scenarios but so far have little theoretical study. In general, these problems involve planning the coordinated motion of a collection of agents…
The branch displacement problem is a well-known problem in assembler design. It revolves around the feature, present in several processor families, of having different instructions, of different sizes, for jumps of different displacements.…
In the field of swarm robotics, one of the most studied problem is Gathering. It asks for a distributed algorithm that brings the robots to a common location, not known in advance. We consider the case of robots constrained to move along…
Motion planning is a key element of robotics since it empowers a robot to navigate autonomously. Particle Swarm Optimization is a simple, yet a very powerful optimization technique which has been effectively used in many complex…
In densely-packed robot swarms operating in confined regions, spatial interference -- which manifests itself as a competition for physical space -- forces robots to spend more time navigating around each other rather than performing the…
We initiate a general theory for analyzing the complexity of motion planning of a single robot through a graph of "gadgets", each with their own state, set of locations, and allowed traversals between locations that can depend on and change…
We investigate dynamics of deformable self-propelled particles with a repulsive interaction whose magnitude depends on the relative direction of elongation of a pair of particles. A collective motion of the particles appears in two…
In this paper, we deal with a size-variable group of pedestrians moving in a unknown confined environment and searching for an exit. Pedestrian dynamics are simulated by means of a recently introduced microscopic (agent-based) model,…
We consider the problem of connected coordinated motion planning for a large collective of simple, identical robots: From a given start grid configuration of robots, we need to reach a desired target configuration via a sequence of…
We study a class of rearrangement problems under a novel pick-n-swap prehensile manipulation model, in which a robotic manipulator, capable of carrying an item and making item swaps, is tasked to sort items stored in lattices of variable…
In this paper, we solve the local gathering problem of a swarm of $n$ indistinguishable, point-shaped robots on a two dimensional grid in asymptotically optimal time $\mathcal{O}(n)$ in the fully synchronous $\mathcal{FSYNC}$ time model.…
Solving task planning problems involving multiple objects and multiple robotic arms poses scalability challenges. Such problems involve not only coordinating multiple high-DoF arms, but also searching through possible sequences of actions…
How can a stack of identical blocks be arranged to extend beyond the edge of a table as far as possible? We consider a generalization of this classic puzzle to blocks that differ in width and mass. Despite the seemingly simple premise, we…
The study of emergent behavior of swarms is of great interest for applied sciences. One of the most fundamental questions for self-organizing swarms is whether the swarms disperse or remain in a spatially cohesive configuration. In the…
We study the parameterized complexity of a generalization of the coordinated motion planning problem on graphs, where the goal is to route a specified subset of a given set of $k$ robots to their destinations with the aim of minimizing the…
Traversing environments with arbitrary obstacles poses significant challenges for bipedal robots. In some cases, whole body motions may be necessary to maneuver around an obstacle, but most existing footstep planners can only select from a…
We present an experimental study of the kinetics of orbitally-shaken macroscopic particles confined to a two-dimensional bounded domain. Discounting the forcing action of the external periodic actuation, the particles show translational…
Robots with very limited capabilities are placed on the vertices of a graph and are required to move toward a single, common vertex, where they remain stationary once they arrive. This task is referred to as the GATHERING problem. Most of…
We consider collective dynamics of self-propelling particles in two dimensions. They can align themselves according to the direction of propulsion of their neighbours, together with a random perturbation (i.e. rotational fluctuation). They…
When considering motion planning for a swarm of $n$ labeled robots, we need to rearrange a given start configuration into a desired target configuration via a sequence of parallel, collision-free robot motions. The objective is to reach the…