Assembly planning for planar structures of a brick wall pattern with rectangular modular robots

Abstract

We present an assembly planning algorithm for constructing planar structures out of rectangular modular robots which can dock to each other to form a brick wall pattern. The algorithm is provably correct and complete, and efficiently computes an assembly sequence in O(m2) time, where m is the number of robots needed to be assembled in a goal structure. The assembly plan incorporates reachability and collision constraints and supports distributed assembly so that multiple robots can be docked to a growing structure without centralized coordination. Simulations and experiments will be also presented.