Clock-and-Wavefront Process for Assembly by Massive Microrobot Swarm

Artificial morphogenesis uses processes inspired by embryology to control massive swarms of robots to assemble complex physical structures. This video shows several simulated applications of the clock-and-wavefront process of vertebrate spinal segmentation to coordinate a microrobot swarm to assemble a insect-like body frame with multi-segment legs on a multi-segment spine. In both cases the number and length of the segments can be controlled. To ensure that the algorithms scale up to extremely large microrobot swarms, they are expressed as partial differential equations.

Representative citations:

Bruce J. MacLennan, “Coordinating Swarms of Microscopic Agents to Assemble Complex Structures,” Ying Tan (Ed.), Swarm Intelligence, Vol. 1: Principles, Current Algorithms and Methods (PBCE119), ch. 20, pp. 583–612, IET (The Institution of Engineering and Technology), 2018.

Bruce J. MacLennan and Allen C. McBride, “Swarm Intelligence for Morphogenetic Engineering,” in Andrew Schumann (Ed.), Swarm Intelligence: From Social Bacteria to Human Beings, Taylor & Francis / CRC, 2020, ch. 2.