MIT Researchers Unveil Self-Assembling Robot Swarm

MIT research scientist John Romanishin, along with professor Daniela Rus and postdoc Kyle Gilpin, have demonstrated a swarm of modular robots with the ability to self-assemble into larger shapes. The individual robots are small and cubical, but they contain a flywheel capable of spinning at 20,000 rpm. By spinning up the flywheel and then braking abruptly, the robots use angular momentum to jump into different positions. Magnets on the edges of the cube guide them into alignment. The researchers hope to be able to shrink the cubes even further, but they think a "refined version of their system could prove useful even at something like its current scale. Armies of mobile cubes could temporarily repair bridges or buildings during emergencies, or raise and reconfigure scaffolding for building projects. They could assemble into different types of furniture or heavy equipment as needed. And they could swarm into environments hostile or inaccessible to humans, diagnose problems, and reorganize themselves to provide solutions." The cubes could also be packed with sensors, batteries, or other technologies.

Comments

What could possibly go wrong?

[SYSS Mouse]

Grey Goo?

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[i kan reed]

Of course, grey goo is the natural place to go with highly programmed, organization dependent, physically large devices that depend on highly specific materials for their construction. It's not like any one of those attributes would render grey goo essentially harmless.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Yeah. That'll be a few versions down the road.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[DokRokHard]

http://xkcd.com/865/

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

[iamhassi]

I saw this and immediately thought T-1000, a android that could form the shape of any object.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[i kan reed]

Among the people who like to talk about it, the term for that is "green goo"

Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our cubic-shaped robotic overlords...

EVEN WORSE

[decipher_saint]

We're talking about a Grey Lego scenario.

No feet shall be spared in the coming apocalypse

wholeness

[doti]

Too bad they didn't show any motion of the object as a whole, only of individual cubes.

other swarm self-ASM bots

[aiadot]

Just a few very well known samples. That is not even the tip of the iceberg. http://www.geek.com/science/robot-swarms-self-assemble-into-flying-units-of-any-shape-or-size-1562961/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkvpEfAPXn4
http://naturalrobotics.group.shef.ac.uk/research.html

(Pay-walled articles) http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4108264&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D4108264
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11431-012-4748-2

This is a pretty popular research topic nowadays. I have no idea why this MIT news is literally in every tech-blog on the net(other than their excellent PR department, I wished the PR guys in my university had the same enthusiasm...). I'm not trying to discredit them or anything, but while their approach is somewhat novel, similar results have been achieved in many different ways.

Re:VOLTRON Lives!!!

[rjejr]

No, he meant Voltron. Nobody cares abut the Iron Giant.

Proposed name:

[SuricouRaven]

Trillions.

(Obscure geek points to anyone who gets the reference)

Next story...

[CCarrot]

Breaking Headline: "MIT Researchers Enter Secret Negotiations With IKEA"

News at 11