1. Scale-Independent Motion Planning for Modular Robots
Given an extremely large ensemble of robots in a 2-D array, how can we program them to form interesting macroscale shapes?
We have created a distributed algorithm for shape formation that requires orders of magnitude less time than traditional motion-planning approaches.
Hole Movement, Creation, and Deletion
Movement
Regularly shaped holes move through the object, reflecting off of holes and edges
Expansion
To raise the contour of the surface, holes are created
Contraction
To lower the contour of the surface, holes are captured and consumed
Intern: Michael De Rosa
Mentor: Jason Campbell
Surface Smoothing
Surface roughness is reduced via a “gravity” based collapse algorithm, derived from the Oslo model [Frette 96]
All hole operations and smoothing are performed purely via local interactions
Macroscale Shape Planning
Offline, the non-intersecting regions of the source and target shapes are triangulated to form regions. The target shape and the regions are the only inputs to the system.
Results
Transformation from
a square to a Tee
~4000 robots
98% compliance
after 970 timesteps