Researchers have created a "Terminator" robot made from detached blocks that can assemble itself into a variety of shapes.
The idea was first proposed by an MIT senior named John Romanishin; when his robotics professor Daniela Rus heard about the idea she thought it was impossible. Now, two years later, the design may be a reality.
The robots, called M-blocks, can climb over each other, jump into the air, and roll across the ground without any external parts, and "move upside down when suspended from a metallic surface," an MIT press release reported.
There is a flywheel that can reach speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute at the heart of each M-block. When the wheel is halted it imposes its angular momentum on the cube. The robot cubes also contain magnets which allow them to attach to one-another.
"It's one of these things that the [modular-robotics] community has been trying to do for a long time, Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of CSAIL, said. "We just needed a creative insight and somebody who was passionate enough to keep coming at it - despite being discouraged."
Most of today's modular-robot systems are "statically stable," which means if they are paused at any point in time they will stay exactly where they are. For this project the researchers had to give up that concept.
"There's a point in time when the cube is essentially flying through the air," postdoc Kyle Gilpin, said. "And you are depending on the magnets to bring it into alignment when it lands. That's something that's totally unique to this system."
In order to make up for the lack of static stability, the robots employ an ingenious landing technique. Two rolling-pin-like magnets are attached to either end of the cubes, when the blocks approach each other they automatically align the north pole to the south and vice versa.
The blocks could be used for a staggering number of purposes, they could assemble themselves into different types of furniture, be used to temporarily repair bridges or other structures, and could even contain cameras or lights.
"What they did that was very interesting is they showed several modes of locomotion," Hod Lipson, a robotics researcher at Cornell University who also thought the project could not be done, said. "Not just one cube flipping around, but multiple cubes working together, multiple cubes moving other cubes - a lot of other modes of motion that really open the door to many, many applications, much beyond what people usually consider when they talk about self-assembly. They rarely think about parts dragging other parts - this kind of cooperative group behavior."
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