Reconfiguration planning for heterogeneous self-reconfiguring robots

Current research in self-reconfiguring robots focuses predominantly on systems of identical modules. However, allowing modules of varying types, with different sensors, for example, is of practical interest. In this paper, we propose the development of an algorithmic basis for heterogeneous self-reconfiguring systems. We demonstrate algorithmic feasibility by presenting O(n/sup 2/) time centralized and O(n/sup 3/) time decentralized solutions to the reconfiguration problem for n non-identical modules. As our centralized time bound is equal to the best published homogeneous solution, we argue that space, as opposed to time, is the critical resource in the reconfiguration problem. Our results encourage the development both of applications that use heterogeneous self-reconfiguration, and also heterogeneous hardware systems.