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Designing a quasi-spherical module for a huge modular robot to create programmable matter

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Abstract

There are many ways to implement programmable matter. One is to build it as a huge modular self-reconfigurable robot composed of a large set of spherical micro-robots, like in the Claytronics project. These micro-robots must be able to stick to each other and move around each other. However, the shape of these micro-robots has not been studied yet and remains a difficult problem as there are numerous constraints to respect. In this article, we propose a quasi-spherical structure for these micro-robots, which answers all the constraints for building programmable matter, helping the realization of an interactive computer-aided design framework. We study different scenarios, validate the ability to move and propose methods for manufacturing these micro-robots.

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Notes

  1. Video at https://youtu.be/tgW3w9dhrxc shows a full version of the deformation process to construct a catom from a planar material.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by ANR (ANR-16-CE33-0022-02), the French “Investissements d’Avenir?”? program, ISITE-BFC project (ANR-15-IDEX-03), Labex ACTION program (ANR-11-LABX-01-01) and Mobilitech project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. FEMTO-ST Institute, CNRS, University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 1 Cours Leprince-Ringuet, 25200, Montbéliard, France

    Benoit Piranda & Julien Bourgeois

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  1. Benoit Piranda
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  2. Julien Bourgeois
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Correspondence to Benoit Piranda.

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This is one of several papers published in Autonomous Robots comprising the “Special Issue on Distributed Robotics: From Fundamentals to Applications”.

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Piranda, B., Bourgeois, J. Designing a quasi-spherical module for a huge modular robot to create programmable matter. Auton Robot 42, 1619–1633 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-018-9710-0

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