Scalable Shape Sculpting via Hole Motion: Motion Planning for Claytronics Michael De Rosa SSS/Speaking Skills Talk 11/4/2005

Talk Outline Motivation –Claytronics –Motion Planning Algorithm Overview –Basic Moves –Smoothing –Planning Demo Results Future Work

Claytronics Intro Modular robots as 3D display substrate Massive ensembles of simple robots Robots must act collaboratively Neighbor-to-neighbor comm. Ensemble axiom

Motion Planning For Claytronics Classical planning methods won’t work past ~1k catoms No high-bandwidth shared channel Broadcast floods involve 1000’s of hops Need a distributed, scale-independent way to form shapes using catoms

Simplifying Assumptions 2D catoms, constrained to a lattice Centralized control point for coordination Only care about the perimeter of the shape All of these assumptions can be relaxed

Talk Outline Motivation –Claytronics –Motion Planning Algorithm Overview –Basic Moves –Smoothing –Planning Demo Results Future Work

Basic Moves

Hole Motion Demo

Smoothing

Demo: Basic Moves & Smoothing

Why Does This Matter? Motion,Creation,Deletion, & Smoothing are all very simple Can be implemented purely with local rules Motion planning problem is then reduced to assigning create/delete states and gravity directions

Planning

Talk Outline Motivation –Claytronics –Motion Planning Algorithm Overview –Basic Moves –Smoothing –Planning Demo Results Future Work

Demo: Square -> T

Demo: Intel

Demo: DARPA

Talk Outline Motivation –Claytronics –Motion Planning Algorithm Overview –Basic Moves –Smoothing –Planning Demo Results Future Work

Results Full implementation of 2D algorithm –Both keyframing and interactive modes –Simulates 20k 2fps –97.2% shape compliance in ensembles of ~60k catoms Formal specification of algorithm Paper draft for submission to ICRA ‘06 Algorithm used as motivation for additional research (IRP summer intern)

Scale-independent Performance Mean of 10 runs 10k timesteps Similar results on other configurations Exp. # catom%comp 100x100 Sq->T x200 Sq->T x300 Sq->T x400 Sq->T

Talk Outline Motivation –Claytronics –Motion Planning Algorithm Overview –Basic Moves –Smoothing –Planning Demo Results Future Work

3D implementation Integration with DPRSim Changing genus of shapes (add/delete holes) Theoretical analysis

Questions/Comments?