You could scale the regions around there geometric centers. There are builtin matlab tool using the polyshape structure that can do so relatively easily:
square = polyshape([0,1,1,0],[1,1,0,0]); % create a template square
%Translation matrix to create 4 contiguous regions
Translatation_matrix = [0,1,1,0;...
0,0,1,1];
%initialize data structure
data(1:length(Translatation_matrix)) = struct('shape',polyshape());
scaleddata = data;
%Translate template according to Translatation_matrix and fill results in
%data structure
for i_shape = 1:length(Translatation_matrix)
data(i_shape).shape = translate(square,Translatation_matrix(:,i_shape)');
end
figure(1)
plot([data.shape])
axis equal
% Using centroid and scale on the translated square, they now have a gap
% between each contiguous regions
for i_shape = 1:length(Translatation_matrix)
[X,Y] = centroid(data(i_shape).shape);
scaleddata(i_shape).shape = scale(data(i_shape).shape, 0.95,[X,Y]);
end
figure(2)
plot([scaleddata.shape])
axis equal
