Scalable Shape Sculpting via
Hole Motion: Motion Planning
for Claytronics
Michael De Rosa
SSS/Speaking Skills Talk
11/4/2005
Talk Outline
• Motivation
– Claytronics
– Motion Planning
• Algorithm Overview
– Basic Moves
– Smoothing
– Planning
• Demo
• Results
• Future Work
Claytronics Intro
• Modular robots as 3D display
substrate
• Massive ensembles of simple
robots
• Robots must act collaboratively
• Neighbor-to-neighbor comm.
• Ensemble axiom
Motion Planning For Claytronics
• Classical planning methods won’t work past
~1k catoms
• No high-bandwidth shared channel
• Broadcast floods involve 1000’s of hops
• Need a distributed, scale-independent way
to form shapes using catoms
Simplifying Assumptions
• 2D catoms, constrained to a lattice
• Centralized control point for coordination
• Only care about the perimeter of the shape
• All of these assumptions can be relaxed
Talk Outline
• Motivation
– Claytronics
– Motion Planning
• Algorithm Overview
– Basic Moves
– Smoothing
– Planning
• Demo
• Results
• Future Work
Basic Moves
Hole Motion Demo
Smoothing
Demo: Basic Moves &
Smoothing
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Why Does This Matter?
• Motion,Creation,Deletion, & Smoothing are
all very simple
• Can be implemented purely with local rules
• Motion planning problem is then reduced to
assigning create/delete states and gravity
directions
Planning
Talk Outline
• Motivation
– Claytronics
– Motion Planning
• Algorithm Overview
– Basic Moves
– Smoothing
– Planning
• Demo
• Results
• Future Work
Demo: Square -> T
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Demo: Intel
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Demo: DARPA
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Talk Outline
• Motivation
– Claytronics
– Motion Planning
• Algorithm Overview
– Basic Moves
– Smoothing
– Planning
• Demo
• Results
• Future Work
Results
• Full implementation of 2D algorithm
– Both keyframing and interactive modes
– Simulates 20k catoms @ 2fps
– 97.2% shape compliance in ensembles of ~60k catoms
• Formal specification of algorithm
• Paper draft for submission to ICRA ‘06
• Algorithm used as motivation for additional
research (IRP summer intern)
Scale-independent Performance
• Mean of 10 runs
• 10k timesteps
• Similar results on
other configurations
Exp.
# catom %comp
100x100 3109
97.34
Sq->T
200x200 12331
Sq->T
300x300 27737
Sq->T
400x400 49169
Sq->T
95.36
96.84
95.91
Talk Outline
• Motivation
– Claytronics
– Motion Planning
• Algorithm Overview
– Basic Moves
– Smoothing
– Planning
• Demo
• Results
• Future Work
Future Work
• 3D implementation
• Integration with DPRSim
• Changing genus of shapes (add/delete
holes)
• Theoretical analysis
Questions/Comments?