Programmable matter i.e. matter that can change its physical properties, more likely its shape according to an internal or an external action is a good example of a cybermatics component. As it links a cyberized shape to real matter, it is a straight example of cyber-physical conjugation. But, this interaction between virtual and real worlds needs two elements. The first one is to find a way to represent the cyberized object using programmable matter and the second is to be able to adapt the matter to the cyberized changes. This article presents the progresses made in these two topics within the Claytronics project.
Abstract-Modular robots needs networking for coordination and it is particularly true for MEMS microrobots. A promising communication technology is nanowireless networking which could be integrated directly into MEMS microrobots, in our case, the catoms of the Claytronics project. A first step towards this objective is to design a wireless simulator able to deal with modular robots. This simulator called Vouivre is integrated in DPRSim a modular robot simulator developed by Intel Research. This paper describes Vouivre and its integration in DPRSim which is an interesting case of integrating different timelines in one simulator. Experiments validate our design and show the interest of using wireless communication in modular robots.
Abstract-Nanowireless electro-magnetic communication networks in the Terahertz band have raised interest in the networking community these very last years. However, if detailed studies have been published on analytical modelling of these networks, no simulation have been run to study in detail the characteristics of the transmission medium. We have designed Vouivre, a standalone nanowireless simulator, which is interfaced with two micro-robots simulator DPRSim and VisibleSim. This paper describes briefly Vouivre and presents first metrics of the communication channel using a communication paradigm called TS-OOK (Time Spread On-Off Keying).
International audienceThe Claytronics project has produced interesting hardware components like cylindric micro-robots called catoms and software models to enable the concept of programmable matter. One application is the use of several catoms linked together so that they can " walk ". These walkers can explore an area and thanks to electromagnetic wireless nano-networks, they can communicate with each other sharing the map of the place to explore. In this paper, we study the different parameters influencing the transmission quality of the map to a sink which uses both traditional wireless and wireless nano-communication networks
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