Geometrical Study of a Quasi-spherical Module for Building Programmable Matter

Abstract

The aim of the Claytronics project is to build spherical micro-robots, called catoms for Claytronics atoms able to stick to each other and able to move around each other. An ensemble of catoms is therefore a huge modular self-reconfigurable robot. However, the shape of these catoms have not been studied yet and remains a difficult problem as there are numerous constraints to respect. In this article, we propose a quasi-spherical catom which answers to all the constraints to build programmable matter.