Publications by Bahar Haghighat

Eciton robotica: Design and Algorithms for an Adaptive Self-Assembling Soft Robot Collective

Social insects successfully create bridges, rafts, nests and other structures out of their own bodies and do so with no centralized control system, simply by following local rules. For example, while traversing rough terrain, army ants (genus Eciton) build ...

IEEE2020

Lightweight physics-based models for the control of fluid-mediated self-assembly of robotic modules

Alcherio Martinoli, Bahar Haghighat, Hala Khodr

Self-assembling robotic systems form a subclass of distributed robotic systems that undertake the fundamental task of structure formation. These systems build desired target structures by putting their constituting robotic modules together in a distributed ...

Elsevier2019

Design and Calibration of a Lightweight Physics-Based Model for Fluid-Mediated Self-Assembly of Robotic Modules

Alcherio Martinoli, Bahar Haghighat, Hala Khodr

In this paper, we consider a system consisting of multiple floating robotic modules performing self-assembly. Faithfully modeling such a system and its inter-module interactions typically involves capturing the hydrodynamic forces acting on the modules usi ...

Springer2019

A Rule Synthesis Algorithm for Programmable Stochastic Self-Assembly of Robotic Modules

Alcherio Martinoli, Bahar Haghighat

Programmable self-assembly of modular robots offers promising means for structure formation at different scales. Rule-based approaches have been previously employed for distributed control of stochastic self-assembly processes. The assembly rate in the pro ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2019

Design, Modeling, and Control Methods for Fluid-Mediated Programmable Self-Assembly of Resource-Constrained Robotic Modules

Bahar Haghighat

The newly emerged and quickly growing science of nanotechnology has been recognized as one of ``the twenty-first century's great leaps forward in scientific knowledge''. Self-assembly provides a powerful enabling technique for nanotechnology by providing a ...

EPFL2018

Automatic synthesis of rulesets for programmable stochastic self-assembly of rotationally symmetric robotic modules

Alcherio Martinoli, Bahar Haghighat

Programmable stochastic self-assembly of modular robots provides promising means to formation of structures at different scales. One way to address the design of dedicated control rulesets for self-assembling robotic modules is to leverage formalisms based ...

2017

Probabilistic Modeling of Programmable Stochastic Self-Assembly of Robotic Modules

Alcherio Martinoli, Bahar Haghighat, Robin Thandiackal, Maximilian Oliver Mogli Mordig

2017

Characterization and Validation of a Novel Robotic System for Fluid-Mediated Programmable Stochastic Self-Assembly

Alcherio Martinoli, Bahar Haghighat

Several self-assembly systems have been developed in recent years, where depending on the capabilities of the building blocks and the controlability of the environment, the assembly process is guided typically through either a fully centralized or a fully ...

Ieee2016

Fluid-Mediated Stochastic Self-Assembly at Centimetric and Sub-Millimetric Scales: Design, Modeling, and Control

Alcherio Martinoli, Grégory Mermoud, Massimo Mastrangeli, Felix Stephan Schill, Bahar Haghighat

Stochastic self-assembly provides promising means for building micro-/nano-structures with a variety of properties and functionalities. Numerous studies have been conducted on the control and modeling of the process in engineered self-assembling systems co ...

2016

Synthesizing Rulesets for Programmable Robotic Self-Assembly: A Case Study using Floating Miniaturized Robots

Alcherio Martinoli, Loïc Tsering Waegeli, Bahar Haghighat, Brice Platerrier

2016

Lily: A Miniature Floating Robotic Platform for Programmable Stochastic Self-Assembly

Alcherio Martinoli, Emmanuel Droz, Bahar Haghighat

Fluid-mediated programmable stochastic self-assembly offers promising means to formation of target structures capable of a variety of functionalities. While miniaturized building blocks allow for finer resolutions in such structures, as well as access to u ...

2015