A new meta-module for efficient reconfiguration of hinged-units modular robots

We present a robust and compact meta-module for edge-hinged modular robot units such as M-TRAN, SuperBot, SMORES, UBot, PolyBot and CKBot, as well as for central-point-hinged ones such as Molecubes and Roombots. Thanks to the rotational degrees of freedom of these units, the novel meta-module is able to expand and contract, as to double/halve its length in each dimension. Moreover, for a large class of edge-hinged robots the proposed meta-module also performs the scrunch/relax and transfer operations required by any tunneling-based reconfiguration strategy, such as those designed for Crystalline and Telecube robots. These results make it possible to apply efficient geometric reconfiguration algorithms to this type of robots. We prove the size of this new meta-module to be optimal. Its robustness and performance substantially improve over previous results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Production matrices for geometric graphs

We present production matrices for non-crossing geometric graphs on point sets in convex position, which allow us to derive formulas for the numbers of such graphs. Several known identities for Catalan numbers, Ballot numbers, and Fibonacci numbers arise in a natural way, and also new formulas are obtained, such as a formula for the number of non-crossing geometric graphs with root vertex of given degree. The characteristic polynomials of some of these production matrices are also presented. The proofs make use of generating trees and Riordan arrays.Postprint (updated version

A new lower bound on the maximum number of plane graphs using production matrices

© 2019. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/We use the concept of production matrices to show that there exist sets of n points in the plane that admit ¿(42.11n ) crossing-free geometric graphs. This improves the previously best known bound of ¿(41.18n ) by Aichholzer et al. (2007).Postprint (author's final draft

A new meta-module design for efficient reconfiguration of modular robots

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Autonomous Robots. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10514-021-09977-6We propose a new meta-module design for two important classes of modular robots. The new metamodule is three-dimensional, robust and compact, improving on the previously proposed one. It applies to socalled “edge-hinged” modular robot units, such as MTRAN, SuperBot, SMORES, UBot, PolyBot and CKBot, as well as to so-called “central-point-hinged” modular robot units, which include Molecubes and Roombots. The new meta-module uses the rotational degrees of freedom of these two types of robot units in order to expand and contract, as to double or halve its length in each of the two directions of its three dimensions, therefore simulating the capabilities of Crystalline and Telecube robots. Furthermore, in the edge-hinged case we prove that the novel meta-module can also perform the scrunch, relax and transfer moves that are necessary in any tunnelingbased reconfiguration algorithm for expanding/contracting modular robots such as Crystalline and Telecube. This implies that the use of meta-meta-modules is unnecessary, and that currently existing efficient reconfiguration algorithms can be applied to a much larger set of modular robots than initially intended.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk lodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734922. I.P. was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): W1230. V.S. and R.S. were supported by projects MINECO MTM2015-63791-R and Gen. Cat. 2017SGR1640. R.S. was also supported by MINECO through the Ram´on y Cajal program.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

New results on production matrices for geometric graphs

We present novel production matrices for non-crossing partitions, connected geometric graphs, and k-angulations, which provide another way of counting the number of such objects. For instance, a formula for the number of connected geometric graphs with given root degree, drawn on a set of n points in convex position in the plane, is presented. Further, we find the characteristic polynomials and we provide a characterization of the eigenvectors of the production matrices.Postprint (author's final draft

On the complexity of barrier resilience for fat regions and bounded ply

In the barrier resilience problem (introduced by Kumar et al., Wireless Networks 2007), we are given a collection of regions of the plane, acting as obstacles, and we would like to remove the minimum number of regions so that two fixed points can be connected without crossing any region. In this paper, we show that the problem is NP-hard when the collection only contains fat regions with bounded ply ¿ (even when they are axis-aligned rectangles of aspect ratio ). We also show that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) for unit disks and for similarly-sized ß-fat regions with bounded ply ¿ and pairwise boundary intersections. We then use our FPT algorithm to construct an -approximation algorithm that runs in time, where .Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Characteristic polynomials of production matrices for geometric graphs

An n×n production matrix for a class of geometric graphs has the property that the numbers of these geometric graphs on up to n vertices can be read off from the powers of the matrix. Recently, we obtained such production matrices for non-crossing geometric graphs on point sets in convex position [Huemer, C., A. Pilz, C. Seara, and R.I. Silveira, Production matrices for geometric graphs, Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics 54 (2016) 301–306]. In this note, we determine the characteristic polynomials of these matrices. Then, the Cayley-Hamilton theorem implies relations among the numbers of geometric graphs with different numbers of vertices. Further, relations between characteristic polynomials of production matrices for geometric graphs and Fibonacci numbers are revealed.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 89 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk lodowska- 90 Curie grant agreement No 734922. 91 C. H., C. S., and R. I. S. were partially supported by projects MINECO MTM2015- 92 63791-R and Gen. Cat. DGR2014SGR46. R. I. S. was also supported by MINECO 93 through the Ramon y Cajal programPostprint (published version

Computing optimal shortcuts for networks

We augment a plane Euclidean network with a segment or shortcut to minimize the largest distance between any two points along the edges of the resulting network. In this continuous setting, the problem of computing distances and placing a shortcut is much harder as all points on the network, instead of only the vertices, must be taken into account. Our main result for general networks states that it is always possible to determine in polynomial time whether the network has an optimal shortcut and compute one in case of existence. We also improve this general method for networks that are paths, restricted to using two types of shortcuts: those of any fixed direction and shortcuts that intersect the path only on its endpoints.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Computing optimal shortcuts for networks

We study augmenting a plane Euclidean network with a segment, called shortcut, to minimize the largest distance between any two points along the edges of the resulting network. Questions of this type have received considerable attention recently, mostly for discrete variants of the problem. We study a fully continuous setting, where all points on the network and the inserted segment must be taken into account. We present the first results on the computation of optimal shortcuts for general networks in this model, together with several results for networks that are paths, restricted to two types of shortcuts: shortcuts with a fixed orientation and simple shortcuts.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

New results on stabbing segments with a polygon

We consider a natural variation of the concept of stabbing a set of segments with a simple polygon: a segment s is stabbed by a simple polygon P if at least one endpoint of s is contained in P, and a segment set S is stabbed by P if P stabs every element of S. Given a segment set S, we study the problem of finding a simple polygon P stabbing S in a way that some measure of P (such as area or perimeter) is optimized. We show that if the elements of S are pairwise disjoint, the problem can be solved in polynomial time. In particular, this solves an open problem posed by Loftier and van Kreveld [Algorithmica 56(2), 236-269 (2010)] [16] about finding a maximum perimeter convex hull for a set of imprecise points modeled as line segments. Our algorithm can also be extended to work for a more general problem, in which instead of segments, the set S consists of a collection of point sets with pairwise disjoint convex hulls. We also prove that for general segments our stabbing problem is NP-hard. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft