Geometrical Study of a Quasi-spherical Module for Building Programmable Matter

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics book series (SPAR, volume 6)

Abstract

The aim of the Claytronics project is to build spherical micro-robots, called catoms for Claytronics atoms able to stick to each other and able to move around each other. An ensemble of catoms is therefore a huge modular self-reconfigurable robot. However, the shape of these catoms have not been studied yet and remains a difficult problem as there are numerous constraints to respect. In this article, we propose a quasi-spherical catom which answers to all the constraints to build programmable matter.

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Notes

Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01) and ANR/RGC (contracts ANR-12-IS02-0004-01 and 3-ZG1F).

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© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC), University of Franche-Comté (UFC) FEMTO-ST InstituteMontbéliardFrance

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