Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2508.09638

Distributed Rhombus Formation of Sliding Squares

Irina Kostitsyna·David Liedtke·Christian Scheideler
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The sliding square model is a widely used abstraction for studying self-reconfigurable robotic systems, where modules are square-shaped robots that move by sliding or rotating over one another. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed algorithm that allows a group of modules to reconfigure into a rhombus shape, starting from an arbitrary side-connected configuration. It is connectivity-preserving and operates under minimal assumptions: one leader module, common chirality, constant memory per module, and visibility and communication restricted to immediate neighbors. Unlike prior work, which relaxes the original sliding square move-set, our approach uses the unmodified move-set, addressing the additional challenge of handling locked configurations. Our algorithm is sequential in nature and operates with a worst-case time complexity of $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ rounds, which is optimal for sequential algorithms. To improve runtime, we introduce two parallel variants of the algorithm. Both rely on a spanning tree data structure, allowing modules to make decisions based on local connectivity. Our experimental results show a significant speedup for the first variant, and linear average runtime for the second variant, which is worst-case optimal for parallel algorithms.

Explore related subjects

cs.CGcs.DC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Irina Kostitsyna, David Liedtke, Christian Scheideler. 2025-08-13. Distributed Rhombus Formation of Sliding Squares. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09638

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Almost Linear Universal Point Sets for Planar Graphs

A point set is universal for planar graphs on $n$ vertices if every such graph has a straight-line drawing without crossings whose vertices belong to the set. We construct universal point sets of size $n^{1+o(1)}$, improving the previous quadratic upper bound. Our construction uses the reduction of Bannister, Cheng, Devanny, and Eppstein from universal point sets to superpatterns for $213$-avoiding permutations. We represent these permutations by ordered rooted forests and construct a small family of intervals containing every such forest. The result follows from a straightforward bound on the size of the family of intervals. GPT-6 Astra assisted in developing the construction and proof.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2026

Some results on Archdeacon's conjecture for rotation systems

A rotation system on $n$ elements assigns to each element a cyclic order of the other $n-1$ elements. A four-element subset is non-planar if its induced rotation system cannot be realized by a crossing-free drawing of $K_4$. As a combinatorial strengthening of Hill's conjecture on the crossing number of the complete graph, Archdeacon conjectured that every rotation system on $n$ elements has at least $H(n)=\frac{1}{4} \lfloor\frac {n}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-2}{2}\rfloor \lfloor\frac{n-3}{2}\rfloor$ non-planar four-element subsets. We computationally verify Archdeacon's conjecture for $n\leq 10$ and show that every extremal rotation system in these orders is realizable by a simple drawing. With computer assistance, we prove that every rotation system on $n$ elements has at least $(8/9 - o(1)) H(n)$ non-planar four-element subsets. We also present a proof by hand for a weaker lower bound of $(2/3-o(1)) H(n)$. Finally, extending recent work of Felsner on antipodal pairs in drawings, we show that Archdeacon's conjecture holds for antipodally shellable rotation systems.

cs.CG↗
arXiv2026

The Hyperbolic Surface Distance, Diameter, and Dirichlet Problems

Despite the prominence of hyperbolic surfaces in mathematics, basic algorithmic questions about them, even computing the distance between two points, have remained open, leaving many features of these surfaces inaccessible. The classical machinery assumes a polyhedral structure absent on a smooth surface. We remove these obstacles. We begin with an efficient $O(g^2)$ algorithm for the distance between two points, where $g$ is the genus of the surface. Building on it, we obtain an $O(g^2 \log g)$ method for answering distance queries from a fixed source and, as a consequence, for recentering a Dirichlet domain around an arbitrary point. This understanding of distances on the surface then lets us approximate the diameter to within any $\eps$ in time $O(g^3 \log g / \eps^2)$. We further show that the diameter, a single real number encoding a great deal about the surface, is exactly computable. Its hyperbolic cosine is an algebraic number over the field encoding the coefficients of the hyperbolic isometries defining the surface.

cs.CG↗