Related papers: Sublinear-Time Reconfiguration of Programmable Mat…
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…
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…
Assembly planning is a fundamental problem in robotics and automation, which involves designing a sequence of motions to bring the separate constituent parts of a product into their final placement in the product. Assembly planning is…
Coordinating the motion of multiple agents in constrained environments is a fundamental challenge in robotics, motion planning, and scheduling. A motivating example involves $n$ robotic arms, each represented as a line segment. The…
The sliding square model is a widely used abstraction for studying self-reconfigurable robotic systems, where modules are square-shaped robots that move by sliding or rotating over one another. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed…
A fundamental challenge in multi-robot motion planning is achieving sufficient coordination to avoid inter-robot conflicts without incurring the large computational expense of searching the joint configuration space of the robot group. In…
We present progress on the problem of reconfiguring a 2D arrangement of building material by a cooperative group of robots. These robots must avoid collisions, deadlocks, and are subjected to the constraint of maintaining connectivity of…
A metamorphic robotic system is an aggregate of homogeneous robot units which can individually and selectively locomote in such a way as to change the global shape of the system. We introduce a mathematical framework for defining and…
The linearization of the equations of motion of a robotics system about a given state-input trajectory, including a controlled equilibrium state, is a valuable tool for model-based planning, closed-loop control, gain tuning, and state…
We consider a distributed system of n identical mobile robots operating in the two dimensional Euclidian plane. As in the previous studies, we consider the robots to be anonymous, oblivious, dis-oriented, and without any communication…
A data structure is presented that explicitly maintains the graph of a Voronoi diagram of $N$ point sites in the plane or the dual graph of a convex hull of points in three dimensions while allowing insertions of new sites/points. Our…
This paper explores general multi-robot task and motion planning, where multiple robots in close proximity manipulate objects while satisfying constraints and a given goal. In particular, we formulate the plan refinement problem--which,…
The Arbitrary Pattern Formation problem asks to design a distributed algorithm that allows a set of autonomous mobile robots to form any specific but arbitrary geometric pattern given as input. The problem has been extensively studied in…
Consider a set of $n$ simple autonomous mobile robots (asynchronous, no common coordinate system, no identities, no central coordination, no direct communication, no memory of the past, non-rigid, deterministic) initially in distinct…
This paper proposes a distributed on-orbit spacecraft assembly algorithm, where future spacecraft can assemble modules with different functions on orbit to form a spacecraft structure with specific functions. This form of spacecraft…
We consider geometric collision-detection problems for modular reconfigurable robots. Assuming the nodes (modules) are connected squares on a grid, we investigate the complexity of deciding whether collisions may occur, or can be avoided,…
We present a decentralized model for autonomous reconfiguration of homogeneous pivoting cube modular robots in two dimensions. Each cube in the ensemble is controlled by a neural network that only gains information from other cubes in its…
Given a graph and two vertex sets satisfying a certain feasibility condition, a reconfiguration problem asks whether we can reach one vertex set from the other by repeating prescribed modification steps while maintaining feasibility. In…
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…
This study presents a system integration approach for planning schedules, sequences, tasks, and motions for reconfigurable robots to automatically disassemble constrained structures in a non-destructive manner. Such systems must adapt their…