Universal Coating in the 3D Hybrid Model

03/28/2023

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by   Irina Kostitsyna, et al.

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Motivated by the prospect of nano-robots that assist human physiological functions at the nanoscale, we investigate the coating problem in the three-dimensional model for hybrid programmable matter. In this model, a single agent with strictly limited viewing range and the computational capability of a deterministic finite automaton can act on passive tiles by picking up a tile, moving, and placing it at some spot. The goal of the coating problem is to fill each node of some surface graph of size n with a tile. We first solve the problem on a restricted class of graphs with a single tile type, and then use constantly many tile types to encode this graph in certain surface graphs capturing the surface of 3D objects. Our algorithm requires 𝒪(n^2) steps, which is worst-case optimal compared to an agent with global knowledge and no memory restrictions.