Robot pebbles: One centimeter modules for programmable matter through self-disassembly

K Gilpin, A Knaian, D Rus - 2010 IEEE International …, 2010 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
K Gilpin, A Knaian, D Rus
2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2010ieeexplore.ieee.org
This paper describes the design, fabrication, and experimental results of a programmable
matter system capable of 2D shape formation through subtraction. The system is composed
of autonomous 1cm modules which use custom-designed electropermanent magnets to
bond, communicate, and share power with their neighbors. Given an initial block composed
of many of these modules latched together in a regular crystalline structure, our system is
able to form shapes by detaching the unnecessary modules. Many experiments show that …
This paper describes the design, fabrication, and experimental results of a programmable matter system capable of 2D shape formation through subtraction. The system is composed of autonomous 1cm modules which use custom-designed electropermanent magnets to bond, communicate, and share power with their neighbors. Given an initial block composed of many of these modules latched together in a regular crystalline structure, our system is able to form shapes by detaching the unnecessary modules. Many experiments show that the modules in our system are able to distribute data at 9600bps to their neighbors with a 98.5% success rate after four retries, and the connectors are able to support over 85 times the weight of a single module.
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