Drive Magnetic Micro-Robots Through a 2D Vascular Network

Drive n robots through a 2D vascular structure using the mouse or keyboard.

The robots are quite simple -- they all move in the direction you command until they hit an obstacle or another robot. Similar games include Richochet Robots and Atomix, but here ALL the robots move at each command. This simulates magnetotactic bacteria, or magnetized tetrahymena pyriformis. This example appears in "Reconfiguring Massive Particle Swarms with Limited, Global Control", by Aaron Becker, Erik Demaine, Sándor Fekete, Golnaz Habibi, and James McLurkin 9th International Symposium on Algorithms and Experiments for Sensor Systems, Wireless Networks and Distributed Robotics September 5-6, 2013. (Fig. 1)

As it turns out, this problem is computationally difficult: we prove NP-hardness. While this result shows the richness of our model (despite the limited control over the individual parts), it also constitutes a major impediment for constructive algorithmic work.

Author: Aaron Becker

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eExZO0HrWRQ
http://www.youtube.com/user/aabecker5

Now uses 8-point connectivity by mapping
q,w,e
a, d
z,x,c
to the 8 directions. You can also use the keyboard arrows to move in 8 directions, or use the mouse to follow arbitrary angles (uses Bresenham algorithm for this).