Programmable Matter

The vision for « Programmable Matter » is to create a material composed of micro-robots which can be programmed to change its shapes (self-reconfiguration) and to change its physical properties on demand. The OMNI group is involved in building and programming distributed intelligent micro-electro-mechanical systems since 2006.

The main research topics in this thematic are:

  • Distributed algorithmics for modular microrobots, focused on conception of modules (such as BlinkyBlocks), distributed algorithms, self-reconfiguration algorithms, simulation environment (such as VisibleSim), and hardware design.
  • Communication in nanonetworks, focusing on routing and transport layers for electromagnetic nanonetworks as defined by Josep Jornet.  Examples of works: in a broadcast, reducing the number of forwarders (routers) and the receivers, given the scarce resources in terms of energy and memory.  BitSimulator simulator allows to test our algorithms in dense nanonetworks.

Several projects, especially I-SITE and ANR, have been accepted in this topic.


Click here for more information about our programmable matter project.