If the movies have taught us anything, it’s that the future isn’t just about robots–it’s about robots that can heal, adapt, and change their entire appearance at a moment’s notice. In a future directed by Michael Bay, that plays out as a semi-truck reconfiguring itself into a bipedal fighting machine halfway through a front-flip. For now, though, the action is a little more modest. In this clip, we see the real state of the art in self-assembling bots: a bunch of little magnetic cubes scuttling around a tabletop. It’s much cooler than it sounds...
M-Blocks are a new breed of self-assembling robot currently in development at MIT. Each cube is about an inch and a half across on each face, with a flywheel on the inside and an array of magnets on the outside. By spinning the flywheel at high speeds–up to 20,000 revolutions per minute–the self-contained units can scoot across tables and flip themselves through the air. Once they come close to another block, a clever system of self-aligning magnets attaches them to their partner. Seeing a single cube clamber on top of another isn’t especially impressive. But watch several move at once, with disparate parts moving independently and the larger whole rapidly taking a totally new form, and you can start to see a hazy path towards Optimus Prime.
Kyle Gilpin, a researcher who’s working on the project along with John Romanishin and robotics professor Daniela Rus, says there are precedents for various aspects of the design, but the way M-Blocks puts them together is entirely new. There are some bots that use magnets to bond, Gilpin points out, and others that use flywheels for movement, but there aren’t any that use these things towards an autonomously reconfiguring end. Plus, the setup is far more elegant than previous attempts at assembling bots, many of which had unwieldy external components. “In general, our system is unique because everything is exceedingly simple,” Gilpin says. “The modules in the video only have two motors–one to spin the flywheel and another to actuate the braking mechanism. Likewise, the bonding mechanism is completely passive. The magnets self-align and naturally draw neighboring M-Blocks together.”
That magnetic bonding system is worth a closer look. Each cube’s face has four magnets, making for a firm attachment when two modules are face-to-face. The edge of each cube has two additional cylindrical magnets, which freely rotate as the cubes approach each other, aligning north and south poles. These edges are also beveled, so when cubes are face-to-face, there’s a gap between these edge magnets; when one starts to flip itself to another face of its neighbor, the edge magnets come in direct contact, forming a strong anchor on which the blocks can flip. The beauty of this passive linking system is that it all happens on the outside of the modules, requiring nothing in the way of electronics or motors to control.
The team is working on giving the ‘bots a bit more autonomy.
The team is currently working on giving the ‘bots a bit more autonomy. In the video, the cubes are being controlled by hand via a remote control. “As a result, it’s difficult to accurately control the flywheel velocity and the exact moment at which the brake is applied,” Gilpin says. If you thought controlling a toy helicopter was tough, try sticking a landing with a lurching magnetic cube. The latest generation of the modules have the computational capacity to automate the movement themselves, and the team is currently hashing out the code to drive it all.
But they’re also thinking towards real world applications, something that will require a more diverse collection of blocks. Some might have a single, more powerful flywheel, allowing them to move several blocks at once, dragging themselves and neighbors as one cohesive unit. The researchers are also considering passive, non-moving blocks battery blocks which could charge neighboring modules, giving the entire system the ability to travel greater distances and climb more challenge obstacles. Lacking motors of their own, these could be tossed around as needed by the other modules, Gilpin says.
That’s just the start, though. The team envisions M-Blocks with cameras or claw-like grippers–specialized blocks that could be carried by others and put in place for other jobs. “We want hundreds of cubes, scattered randomly across the floor, to be able to identify each other, coalesce, and autonomously transform into a chair, or a ladder, or a desk, on demand,” Romanishin explained in a report from MIT. When you’ve reached that point, you have to start asking: How many desks does it take to build an Autobot?
Source:http://www.wired.com/design/2013/10/watch-incredible-self-assembling-robots-out-of-mit/
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