MIT builds modular robots that self-assemble
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
Not too sure how effective/useful these might be, but ...
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/04/mit-builds-modular-robots-that-self-assemble/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589
Modular robots have long been a reality, but they often require human intervention to assemble or aren't very clever. MIT's new M-Block robots don't need such help. Each cube-shaped machine includes a flywheel and edge magnets, the combination of which lets it attach to its fellow robots simply by spinning into place; the devices can climb over each other and even jump into position.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/04/mit-builds-modular-robots-that-self-assemble/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589
Modular robots have long been a reality, but they often require human intervention to assemble or aren't very clever. MIT's new M-Block robots don't need such help. Each cube-shaped machine includes a flywheel and edge magnets, the combination of which lets it attach to its fellow robots simply by spinning into place; the devices can climb over each other and even jump into position.
Comments
Apparently not, they just assemble and disassemble. I begin to wonder what MIT is really up to these days.
Or Congress. They assemble, do nothing useful and then go home!
Not very IMHO, but then again that may just be me. Not the least bit interested in projects that have no useful application.
Guess I'm apparently alone in thinking it's pretty darned impressive, innovative, unique, and a fine example of "outside the nine dots" thinking.
Certainly not suitable for every application, but I can see reconfigurable beams, antenna and solar arrays on spacecraft. Or a shape-changing robot snake that runs through mazes and snakes through ancient pyramid passageways.
Are you saying you have never made a stupid thing just for the fun of making a stupid thing? Perhaps just for a joke, or perhaps for the "art". Or just to see if it was possible. Or, just, because.
Should MIT be doing this? Is it valuable research? No idea.
Gosh, haven't seen that for long time. When I first saw that in school the first solution that came to my mind involved joining up all the dots with only three straight lines. Never managed to convince anyone it was a valid solution.
Should MIT be doing this? Is it valuable research? No idea either. Assembling a bunch of cubes that do nothing but assembling themselves into various configurations seems pretty useless to me, so I am not too impressed. Perhaps if they had suggested some use for it I would be.
Seems to me that the majority of things humans get up to when they are no longer having to scrape a living is "non-useful". I just could not believe I found someone who is only interested in useful things.
Erco
No, you're not alone!
Just by the fact they can be done and realy exists, as a functional item!
Irrespective to their apparent usefulness, or not, since their early conception, and even now, they reached their prototype phase.
I would love to be here, some 40 years in the future, commenting about those little seeds and how they grew, till reaching as a moving explorer, into some gelid and mankind hostile natural satellite or planet.
I'm inviting you, explicity, to be here too!
Perhaps only to shake some distant hands, but with many good memories to share.:nerd:
In a just flashed insight, if they can make it inflatable, foldable or collapsible in some way, one can stuff a bunch of them inside its backpack, effectively carrying a self assemblable igloo, to protect its life, in hazardous situations.
Edit: Make then in nano scale, perhaps transparent or flexible, and teach them to automatically fix your diving suit, or helmet, during a +300 m dive.
Sometimes, having something to trust and depend on, it's just everything someone needs to survive.
Yanomani
Kwinn
You're not alone, being easily bored.
Many times, just after some general ideas can be put in practice, I can surely figure the whole project being finished.
Then there comes the endless starving sensation, of some new challenge to concentrate on.
So, why not just a few insidious seeds, for you to thought about:
Why we must need a 3D printer, at all?
If we are really smart, why we don't make them as almost wise polymer nanodrops, enough to chain and pile together, into any shape we command then to behave?
Yanomani
I too, was disappointed. Really when I hear, "MIT does such & such" I tend to get really excited. This however, not so much.
This wouldn't work in space at all, as they need to hop/jump or otherwise bounce themselves into place. They need gravity in other words. Outer-space isn't good for this for of requirement.
First thing you have to do is make it work, then you can make it good.
Inertia and magnetism still work in space last time I looked. Don't give up hope yet.
Why would they not work in space? Magnets and flywheels work OK without gravity.
From beau's signature
That's just you. "Useful" is simply a matter of context. But don't worry, others have it covered.
Heater,
Fully agreed!
I could even recall an ancient USA satellite loosing its track, because it contained twin rigid disk drivres inside it, in a counter-rotating in respect to each other's, collinear tandem axis scheme, and one of the disks had rotational speed control failure, or even a full stop.
I just can't remember mission name or details, nor had any luck googling it.
My elephant memory started showing it's insidious and betraying fadeout.
Flywheel gyroscopic effect played an importante role in trajetory control of early almost-all-electro-mechanics space missions.
Yanomani
Hubble: http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/1647
Thanks Erco,
I was aware of such Hubble gyroscope failure episode and I could manage to find it, by Google means. But this is not the one I'd refered earlier.
I cannot recall all the details, even if the satellite was commited to a scientific or military mission.
But I clearly recall my own reaction, when I read about it; it has realy astonished me, by such early uses of rigid disk drives at space missions, then I wonder that the mission should be from late 70's, or even earlier, I'm not sure at all.
Another thing that comes to my mind, when I'm trying to gather the more details I can from my remembrances: perhaps it was a faulty roller bearing or a sudden head crash, that did caused the motor to loose it's rotational balance.
But the deeper I try to dive inside my brain's contents, the bigger the chimeras that find their own jail brake oportunity. So I believe it's just time to let them safely settle, into the limbo.
Yanomani
While you're partially correct that yes, magnetism works, you are failing to see how gravity, e.g Earth is needed. They must jump, or bounce. The magnets only serve to suck themselves towards each other once in range of another magnet. But they must hop and bounce to even get within range. No surface to hop from means the magnets at that point are just useless. Unless, you contain the in some box or something and just hope that over some time they'l inevitably all collide and get close enough for the magnets to work. Just hope the box isn't metal, or it'll never work.
Clearly in space with no gravity a "cloud" of these separated cubes is not going to have a way to form itself into a clump.
Except I suspect that if they are not separated by large distances and not traveling away from each other with two much energy all those magnets will pull them together eventually.
When you have a clump of them then they can maneuver around each other just fine as shown in the video. Even a certain amount of jumping may work, those magnets are still at work in space, provided they don't jump so hard as to break free of that magnetic pull.
Heater
And what if they can be position aware, in respect to each other's and also to many of the relevant surrounding stars.
Sure for spacial environment usages, they must not need to be simple cubes; part of them can be shaped as expanded cubic solids, ressembling some soccer game balls.
Their faces can pop out in opposing side pairs, triplets and even higher order groups, meant to easier their global position maintenace.
Voice coils and magnetic masses are a good drive option, for some not so short traveling ranges.
Space fishing spinning reels can release and recoil tracking polymer wires or tapes, so they can almost "launch", polarity sensors aware, field reversible magnetic lures.
It can be an eye catching experience to throw away a bunch of them, from some future space station flyby, and observe some form of "community forming" behavior strategies.
When ingenuity starts boiling, good idea soups can be served.
Yanomani
Nature can always be the wisest consultant.
Yanomani
Clearly adding rocket boosters is the solution to our problem. Three at each corner ought to do the trick yes?