Modeling Self-Assembly Across Scales: The Unifying Perspective of Smart Minimal Particles

: A wealth of current research in microengineering aims at fabricating devices of increasing complexity, notably by (self-)assembling elementary components into heterogeneous functional systems. At the same time, a large body of robotic research called swarm robotics is concerned with the design and the control of large ensembles of robots of decreasing size and complexity. This paper describes the asymptotic convergence of micro/nano electromechanical systems (M/NEMS) on one side, and swarm robotic systems on the other, toward a unifying class of systems, which we denote Smart Minimal Particles (SMPs). We define SMPs as mobile, purely reactive and physically embodied agents that compensate for their limited on-board capabilities using specifically engineered reactivity to external physical stimuli, including local energy and information scavenging. In trading off internal resources for simplicity and robustness, SMPs are still able to collectively perform non-trivial, spatio-tempora...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: MICROMACHINES
• Authors: Massimo Mastrangeli, Grégory Mermoud, Alcherio Martinoli
• Keywords: Hardware, MICROMACHINES 2011, Robotic, SMPs, Systems