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Reconfiguration Algorithms for Cubic Modular Robots with Realistic Movement Constraints

Authors MIT-NASA Space Robots Team, Josh Brunner, Kenneth C. Cheung, Erik D. Demaine , Jenny Diomidova, Christine Gregg, Della H. Hendrickson, Irina Kostitsyna

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MIT-NASA Space Robots Team
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
  • NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
Josh Brunner
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Kenneth C. Cheung
  • NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
Erik D. Demaine
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jenny Diomidova
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Christine Gregg
  • NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
Della H. Hendrickson
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Irina Kostitsyna
  • KBR at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

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MIT-NASA Space Robots Team, Josh Brunner, Kenneth C. Cheung, Erik D. Demaine, Jenny Diomidova, Christine Gregg, Della H. Hendrickson, and Irina Kostitsyna. Reconfiguration Algorithms for Cubic Modular Robots with Realistic Movement Constraints. In 19th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 294, pp. 34:1-34:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2024.34

Abstract

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 an exact unit cube, but rather have features like bumps extending outside the allotted space so that modules can interlock. Thus, for example, our model forbids modules from squeezing in between two other modules that are one unit distance apart. Second, our model captures the practical scenario of many passive modules assembled by a single robot, instead of requiring all modules to be able to move on their own. We prove two universality results. First, with a supply of auxiliary modules, we show that any connected polycube structure can be constructed by a carefully aligned plane sweep. Second, without additional modules, we show how to construct any structure for which a natural notion of external feature size is at least a constant; this property largely consolidates forbidden-pattern properties used in previous works on reconfigurable modular robots.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Computational geometry
Keywords
  • Modular robotics
  • programmable matter
  • digital materials
  • motion planning

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