Making self-disassembling objects with multiple components in the Robot Pebbles system

Gilpin, Kyle; Koyanagi, Kent; Rus, Daniela

doi:10.1109/icra.2011.5980305

Cited by 17 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Alternatively, continuous shape deformation can be achieved through, e.g., pneumatic or hydraulic actuation [17,78], or shape-memory alloys [58]. Microrobotics can also be used to position multiple physical objects on a 2D plane [21,45,57], while free 3D positioning through levitation is currently being researched [39,61]. Physical geometry encoding can be complemented with color encoding through the use of deformable visual displays [47,65], sets of actuated visual displays [1], or projection mapping [5].…”

Section: Enabling Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunities and Challenges for Data Physicalization

Jansen

Dragicevic

Isenberg

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

413

268

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Figure 1: Examples of data physicalizations: (left) population density map of Mexico City co-created by Richard Burdett and exhibited at the Tate Modern (photo by Stefan Geens), (center) similar data shown on an actuated display from the MIT Media Lab [70], and (right) spherical particles suspended by acoustic levitation [61]. All images are copyright to their respective owners. ABSTRACTPhysical representations of data have existed for thousands of years. Yet it is now that advances in digital fabrication, actuated tangible interfaces, and shape-changing displays are spurring an emerging area of research that we call Data Physicalization. It aims to help people explore, understand, and communicate data using computer-supported physical data representations. We call these representations physicalizations, analogously to visualizations -their purely visual counterpart. In this article, we go beyond the focused research questions addressed so far by delineating the research area, synthesizing its open challenges, and laying out a research agenda.

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Section: Enabling Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunities and Challenges for Data Physicalization

Jansen

Dragicevic

Isenberg

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

413

268

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Defined as the reversible phenomenon of an ordered spatial structure emerging from the aggregate behavior of simpler entities through local interactions and inherent randomness in the system, with no external direction [2], self-assembly is a powerful coordination mechanism which has recently been the focus of studies in distributed robotics [3], [4], [5], [6]. Playing a key role in many of the natural structuring phenomena at all scales, a key motivation for deploying self-assembly in engineered collective systems has been to realize the inherent scalability and robustness observed in the natural instances [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lily: A miniature floating robotic platform for programmable stochastic self-assembly

Haghighat

Droz

Martinoli

2015

2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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Abstract-Fluid-mediated programmable stochastic selfassembly offers promising means to formation of target structures capable of a variety of functionalities. While miniaturized building blocks allow for finer resolutions in such structures, as well as access to unconventional environments, they can only be endowed with very limited on-board resources. In this paper we present the design, fabrication, and experimental results validating the key functionalities of the Lily robot as the building block in a programmable stochastic fluidic self-assembly system, capable of forming 2D structures. In particular, we aim at driving a system including an arbitrary number of Lilies to form target structures through parallel selfassembly, using exclusively local information and communication. While capable of wireless communication to a base station, Lilies are endowed with custom-designed electropermanent magnets to latch and also to communicate locally with their neighbors. Several experiments validate the reliability of the radio channel as well as the robustness of the local inductionbased communication which allows for data transfer at 9600 bps with a success rate of 92.8% without repetition. The latches are shown to hold four times the weight of a single robot and to drag in another Lily from a distance of 4 mm in water.

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“…The formation of target structures is modeled and controlled automatically and in real-time by a dedicated computational framework, which relies on a graphical description of the states and transitions in the system, resulting in scalability limitations for large swarms. Structure formation in the system of Pebble robots in [4] takes a different approach: the robots start in an ordered lattice, the stochastic forces in the environment are then relied upon to detach unwanted blocks. Pebbles are only powered when connected to the structure around a seed node connected to a power-supply.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While intelligent building blocks can actively take part in the SA process and thus allow for distributed control approaches [2], [3], [4], [5], the SA process of passive building blocks can only be controlled through a centralized approach [6], [7], [8]. Centralized control approaches become 1.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization and validation of a novel robotic system for fluid-mediated programmable stochastic self-assembly

Haghighat

Martinoli

2016

2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Abstract-Several self-assembly systems have been developed in recent years, where depending on the capabilities of the building blocks and the controlability of the environment, the assembly process is guided typically through either a fully centralized or a fully distributed control approach. In this work, we present a novel experimental system for studying the range of fully centralized to fully distributed control strategies. The system is built around the floating 3-cm-sized Lily robots, and comprises a water-filled tank with peripheral pumps, an overhead camera, an overhead projector, and a workstation capable of controlling the fluidic flow field, setting the ambient luminosity, communicating with the robots over radio, and visually tracking their trajectories. We carry out several experiments to characterize the system and validate its capabilities. First, a statistical analysis is conducted to show that the system is governed by reaction diffusion dynamics, and validate the applicability of the standard chemical kinetics modeling. Additionally, the natural tendency of the system for structure formation subject to different flow fields is investigated and corresponding implications on guiding the self-assembly process are discussed. Finally, two control approaches are studied: 1) a fully distributed control approach and 2) a distributed approach with additional central supervision exhibiting an improved performance. The formation time statistics are compared and a discussion on the generalization of the method is provided.

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Making self-disassembling objects with multiple components in the Robot Pebbles system

Cited by 17 publications

References 17 publications

Opportunities and Challenges for Data Physicalization

Opportunities and Challenges for Data Physicalization

Lily: A miniature floating robotic platform for programmable stochastic self-assembly

Characterization and validation of a novel robotic system for fluid-mediated programmable stochastic self-assembly

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