Scalable Compiler for the TERMES Distributed Assembly System

The TERMES system is a robot collective capable of autonomous construction of 3D user-specified structures . A key component of the framework is an off-line compiler which takes in a structure blueprint and generates a directed map, in turn permitting an arbitrary number of robots to perform decentralized construction in a provably correct manner. In past work, this compiler was limited to a non-optimized search approach which scaled poorly with the structure size. Here, we recast the process as a constraint satisfaction problem and present new scalable compiler schemes and the ability to quickly generate provably correct maps (or find that none exist) of structures with up to 1 million bricks. We compare the performance of the compilers on a range of structures, and show how the transition probability between locations in the structure may be altered to improve system efficiency. This work represents an important step towards collective robotic construction of real-world structures.

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