Telecube module simulation programmed using local rules to locomote through reconfiguration.

Robots that use lattice reconfiguration are self-reconfigurable robots that rearrange their positions by moving from one position on a lattice to a neighboring position on the lattice, like LEGO(r) bricks that could rearrange themselves.

For example, in 2D, a lattice could be a rectilinear grid and the modules (usually all identical) move from one square to another. The connectivity may be 4 connected (the squares in each cardinal direction) or 8 connected (including the diagonally adjacent ones). The only important characteristic is that the number of neighbors is discrete and finite. The type of lattice leads to different forms of hardware and motions. The easiest ones to think about are the common lattices found in crystallic packing like that of atoms.

The lattice structure makes planning the motions of when and where to move modules an interesting one from a computer science point of view as the space of possible motions is easy to represent in a computer. It is also interesting but difficult because the space of possible sequences grows exponentially with the number of modules. What seems to excite many people is imagining many thousands or millions or billions of tiny modules as some form of blob morphing from one arbitrary shape into another.

This currently the most popular style of self-reconfigurable robot perhaps because of this reason. There are a large variety of groups working on building, simulating, controlling and planning these robots that can be seen on the links page.

We have three different types of lattice-style robots:

	Telecube Each face of the cube can expand or retract and connect or disconnect from neighboring modules. This is a 3D version of the 2D "Crystalline" robot of Rus and Vona.
	Digital Clay A 3D tactile user interface. This is not actually a robot since the modules do not have actuators. However, it does have reconfigurable modules that rest on a lattice.
	Proteo Rhombic dodecahedron shaped modules reconfigure by rolling over edges. This system has only been simulated so far.