Optimal In-Place Compaction of Sliding Cubes

The sliding cubes model is a well-established theoretical framework that supports the analysis of reconfiguration algorithms for modular robots consisting of face-connected cubes. As is common in the literature, we focus on reconfiguration via an intermediate canonical shape. Specifically, we present an in-place algorithm that reconfigures any n-cube configuration into a compact canonical shape using a number of moves proportional to the sum of coordinates of the input cubes. This result is asymptotically optimal and strictly improves on all prior work. Furthermore, our algorithm directly extends to two dimensions and any dimension higher than three.