Robot pebbles: One centimeter modules for programmable matter through self-disassembly
Author(s)
Knaian, Ara N.
Gilpin, Kyle W
Rus, Daniela L
Date Issued
May 2010
Journal
Proceedings for 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), ICRA 2010
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Citation
Gilpin, Kyle, Ara Knaian, and Daniela Rus. “Robot Pebbles: One Centimeter Modules for Programmable Matter Through Self-disassembly.” IEEE, 2010. 2485–2492. Web.© 2010 IEEE.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
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.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Bits and Atoms
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509817
