A non-deadlock reconfiguration strategy in cooperative module systems

The paper studies non-deadlock reconfiguration strategies in cooperative module systems with the goal of driving the modules from any initial configuration to any goal configuration. A matrix representation is introduced to describe the configuration of a hexagonal-shaped module system and its reconfiguration. We firstly find a sub-configuration in the goal configuration, called trunk, to ensure the success of the reconfiguration strategy to fill the trunk first and then the remaining. Next, based on the matrix representation, we propose a new reconfiguration strategy to fill the trunk and the whole goal configuration gradually according to a proper label sequence. It has been proved that the strategy ensures non-deadlock in reconfiguration from any initial configuration to any goal configuration as long as both are physically connected.