Paper by Erik D. Demaine

Reference:

Greg Aloupis, Sébastien Collette, Erik D. Demaine, Stefan Langerman, Vera Sacristán, and Stefanie Wuhrer, “Reconfiguration of Cube-Style Modular Robots Using O(log n) Parallel Moves”, in Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2008), Gold Coast, Australia, December 15–17, 2008, pages 342–353.

Abstract:

We consider a model of reconfigurable robot, introduced and prototyped by the robotics community. The robot consists of independently manipulable unit-square atoms that can extend/contract arms on each side and attach/detach from neighbors. The optimal worst-case number of sequential moves required to transform one connected configuration to another was shown to be Θ(n) at ISAAC 2007. However, in principle, atoms can all move simultaneously. We develop a parallel algorithm for reconfiguration that runs in only O(log n) parallel steps, although the total number of operations increases slightly to Θ(n log n). The result is the first (theoretically) almost-instantaneous universally reconfigurable robot built from simple units.

Comments:

This paper is also available from SpringerLink.

Copyright:

Copyright held by the authors.

Length:

The paper is 12 pages.

Availability:

The paper is available in PDF (252k).

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