DARS'16 Conference Paper

Geometrical study of a quasi-spherical module for building programmable matter

Benoît Piranda, Julien Bourgeois,

13th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2016), London, United Kingdom, nov. 7-9, 2016.

This paper has been nominated for Best Paper Award.

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.

Some more details here.