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The concept of programmable matter envisions a very large number of tiny and simple robot particles forming a smart material. Even though the particles are restricted to local communication, local movement, and simple computation, their…
Over three decades of scientific endeavors to realize programmable matter, a substance that can change its physical properties based on user input or responses to its environment, there have been many advances in both the engineering of…
Programmable matter (PM) is a form of matter capable of dynamically altering its physical properties, such as shape or density, through programmable means. From a robotics perspective, PM can be realized as a distributed system consisting…
Individual modules of programmable matter participate in their system's collective behavior by expending energy to perform actions. However, not all modules may have access to the external energy source powering the system, necessitating a…
We consider programmable matter consisting of simple computational elements, called particles, that can establish and release bonds and can actively move in a self-organized way, and we investigate the feasibility of solving fundamental…
Addressing a fundamental problem in programmable matter, we present the first deterministic algorithm to elect a unique leader in a system of connected amoebots assuming only that amoebots are initially contracted. Previous algorithms…
We study centralized reconfiguration problems for geometric amoebot structures. A set of $n$ amoebots occupy nodes on the triangular grid and can reconfigure via expansion and contraction operations. We focus on the joint movement…
In programmable matter, we consider a large number of tiny, primitive computational entities called particles that run distributed algorithms to control global properties of the particle structure. Shape formation problems, where the…
Active matter physics and swarm robotics have provided powerful tools for the study and control of ensembles driven by internal sources. At the macroscale, controlling swarms typically utilizes significant memory, processing power, and…
This paper proposes a general quantum algorithm that can be applied to any classical computer program. Each computational step is written using reversible operators, but the operators remain classical in that the qubits take on values of…
The amoebot model [Derakhshandeh et al., 2014] has been proposed as a model for programmable matter consisting of tiny, robotic elements called amoebots. We consider the reconfigurable circuit extension [Feldmann et al., JCB 2022] of the…
We investigate computational issues in the distributed model Amoebots of programmable matter. In this model, the computational entities, called particles, are anonymous finite-state machines that operate and move on an hexagonal tasselation…
Computational devices combining two or more different parts, one controlling the operation of the other, for example, derive their power from the interaction, in addition to the capabilities of the parts. Non-classical computation has…
This paper addresses the concurrency issues affecting Behavior Trees (BTs), a popular tool to model the behaviors of autonomous agents in the video game and the robotics industry. BT designers can easily build complex behaviors composing…
Distributed computing often gives rise to complex concurrent and interacting activities. In some cases several concurrent activities may be working together, i.e. cooperating, to solve a given problem; in other cases, the activities may be…
Ensemble control, an emerging research field focusing on the study of large populations of dynamical systems, has demonstrated great potential in numerous scientific and practical applications. Striking examples include pulse design for…
Run-and-tumble particles constitute one of the simplest models of self-propelled active matter, and provide an ideal playground to the understanding of out-of-equilibrium systems. We consider an idealized setup where one such particle is…
Shape formation is a basic distributed problem for systems of computational mobile entities. Intensively studied for systems of autonomous mobile robots, it has recently been investigated in the realm of programmable matter. Namely, it has…
Current artificial intelligence systems show near-human-level capabilities when deployed in isolation. Systems of a few collaborating intelligent agents are being engineered to perform tasks collectively. This raises the question of whether…
In this work, we introduce a modular framework for specifying distributed systems that we call AMECOS. Specifically, our framework departs from the traditional use of sequential specification, which presents limitations both on the…