Related Work

Projects with similar vision and goals

Smart Matter - Andy Berlin, Xerox
Active bridge or columns with strain gauges and stress affectors, surface coated with mems airvalves to move paper. More of a control theory, global approach based directly on sensor behavior (often analog behavior). Also in this category, Brian Williams (MIT aeroastro, NASA) immobile robots - application to buildings and other large sensor systems, create a nervous, immune and regulatory system. Central controller approach, automatically generated based on equations of system behavior and sensor data. Similar in that sensors are relatively fixed, Different in non-digital non-programming approach to control.

Reconfigurable Robots - Mark Yim, Xerox
Many small unit smart modules that assemble themselves into desired global configuration. goal is a reconfigurable or morphing robot. Also in this category, work by Chirikjian on 2D hexagonal unit robots - uses global planning to solve configuration problem.  Main difference is the use of mobile units.
 

Related Programming Paradigms

Paintable computers - Bill Butera, Media Lab
An amorphous computer where bits of code travel about the system and reside in processors based on a score that indicates how well they match their surroundings. Programming model of active data. Interesting applications to data / image storage,  networking etc. Related paradigms are Turtles (Resnick) and Ants (Deneuboug, Ruud Schooderward?). that have more of a complexity  and emergent feeling to them.

Botanical Computing - Daniel Coore
Part of the amorphous computing group. Global language (Growing Point Language) for creating topological patterns that is translated to local actions of individual cells. Uses biologically inspired ideas such as tropism and inhibition. Unlike typical activation-inhibition patterns, the langauge can be used to describe / engineer complex patterns (such as CMOS layouts) . Several shared features with current programmable material programming models.

Behavioral Multi-Agent Robots - Maya Mataric
Similar behavior model to turtles/ants however also describes a set of high level basis behaviors (such as aggregation, dispersion, leader following, etc) that can be composed at a high level to create more complex global bahvior. One of the few attempts at a higher level multi-agent language.
 


 

Origami Mathematics Background


See Tom Hull's page for a very informative discussion on origami mathematics and Huzita's axioms.Two interesting papers on automatically deriving the crease pattern / folding sequence for a given shape are Lang's paper and the flat-origami paper (Demaine, Demaine and Mitchell). Lang's paper derives the crease pattern for a unaxial base that is described using a stick diagram. The problem however of going from the crease pattern to an actual folding sequence is not trivial and not a one to one mapping (one can make a counter example to show that it is possible to screw yourself over by doing things in the wrong sequence...). The second paper proves that the silhoutte of any connected polygonal region (polygon with holes) can be described as a flat origami, and constructed using only mountain and valley folds. Their method uses a ribbon and does alot of folding which may not produce the most efficient or aesthetic origami. However it is composed of some interesting simple primitives - hiding excess paper, turning a strip to a desired angles and changing the color (for bicolor origami).

People
Humiaki Huzita (italian-japanese mathematician, axioms of origami), Kasahara (origami omnibus and several important books on origami), Robert Lang (computer algorithm for complex uniaxial bases, also several origami books), Meguro Maekawa and Kawasaki (algorithms for automatically generating origami), Tom Hull (origami math, webpage, modular origami), John Montroll (technical folder, many origami books).