Surprisingly simple scheme for self-assembling robots

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/simple-scheme-for-self-assembling-robots-1004.html

by grinnick • 13 years ago

134 47 13 years ago

web.mit.edu

otoburb• 13 years ago

If they can figure out how to wirelessly power the cubes, or allow connected cubes to power each other via conductivity (perhaps at the cube edges), then the self-assembly of the bridge at the scale they're aiming for makes much more sense.

Hitting on the flywheel as the core mechanism for locomotion was amazing.

MarcusBrutus8• 13 years ago

People 5 centuries from now will look into 20th and 21st century robotics forays in much the same way as we look at Babbage or Heron's steam-engine. Clever, perhaps ingenious, but hopeless with current technology.

unwind• 13 years ago

Alright, so what do you propose robot researchers do?

Just sit around, somehow waiting for technology to magically improve?

I might be naive, but I like to think of things like this research as the way to get the technology to improve. It's not as if technology has a life of its own and will just improve regardless.

MarcusBrutus8• 13 years ago

I propose that they go fishing and wait it out till there's some game-changing breakthrough in some underlying technology. I'm not sure which are the right underlying technologies in much the same way as Babbage's critics couldn't identify "integrated circuit" as the missing enabler. Could be advances in materials, nanotechnology, even biotechnology. What I know for sure is that when these breakthroughs do happen, all 20th and 21st robotics "pioneering" work will become obsolete and will not serve future practitioners. Robotics is not like mathematics where you can lay a foundation that'll still be relevant and useful to people 10 or 20 centuries down the line. If Babbage instead of fussing with mechanical cranks and gears had invented the Turing machine his life's work wouldn't have gone to waste.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

What do you mean by "robotics", exactly?

I assume you're using some definition that excludes the millions of industrial robots being put to productive use every day. But I don't know what that definition would be.

I'm typing on a computer in large part assembled by robots. Earlier, I took a call on a phone in large part assembled by robots. This morning, I drove a car in large part assembled by robots. It's hard to see how the current state of robots could possibly be described as "hopeless".

MarcusBrutus8• 13 years ago

I am not talking about car factory "robots" (i.e. machines with articulated, arm-like, parts).

eli_gottlieb4• 13 years ago

If you're really going to propose that technology and science will advance that much, then I feel compelled to counter that people five centuries from now will look back on 20th and 21st century robotics forays and pity us for having to live in such tiny, stupid, chaotic brains. They'll wonder how we ever accomplished anything while so congenitally incapable of proper thought or feeling.

Hint: the lesson is never to make futurist predictions, because they're almost never coherent.

gfodor• 13 years ago

It sounds like you are making a prediction about how coherent futurist predictions will seem in the future :)

cjh_• 13 years ago

It is possible that the current tech used in robotics will somehow form the basis for the work over the next 1000 years or so, either directly or via some tangential discovery by researchers working with current tech.

Without the benefit of hindsight it is impossible to tell with certainty what techs are worthwhile exploring and what should simply be discarded, the idea of discarding is of course based on the false assumption that techs that are later unused never had a use (e.g. we may solve a software problem with current tech that will form the basis for future robotics software).

transfire• 13 years ago

Scale size down 10 to 100 fold, add LCD faces and orchestrate a million of them, then Holy Molly!

yk2• 13 years ago

That will give the SPAM-Wave a hole new meaning.

yk2• 13 years ago

This is a great demo. However I wonder, with one flywheel, they should only be able to rotate the individual robots along a single plane? ( And I am somewhat curious, what collective motion of more than one robot looks like. )

menage• 13 years ago

Presumably the flywheel axis can be rotated internally.

thedufer2• 13 years ago

From the one look of the internals (1:50 in the video), there does not appear to be room to rotate the flywheel axis. That said, I would expect that is where they're headed when they can figure out how to use some of the space more efficiently.

scotty79• 13 years ago

I think it can rotate only around single axis, other blocks can rotate axis of that block if they themselves can rotate around different axes.

jessaustin• 13 years ago

If they had two parallel flywheels that could be accelerated separately, I think that gives you rotation around an axis perpendicular to whatever surface the cube is resting on. It appears from the video that they have just a single flywheel, so maybe they're just taking advantage of how "noisy" the system is. That is, if a cube probably lands a bit "off", the next instruction can either fix that "error" or exaggerate it. Of course, they might also be just arranging everything carefully by hand before they start the camera. They never claimed the system was finished.

Cubes are easier to think about, but they're not the only polyhedrons that fill space. I wonder what this would look like with truncated octahedrons?

HPLovecraft• 13 years ago

Roger Waters would LOVE these for his Live Wall show lol

codereflection• 13 years ago

I love this. Another great example of being told "that can't be done", and getting to prove those naysayers wrong.

eli_gottlieb4• 13 years ago

This is the kind of stuff we mean when we say, "Go beyond the impossible, and kick logic to the curb."

Kol ha'kavod!

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Ok, that is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Love the comment that they haven't taken to heart the Replicator storyline from SG-1.

The idea of exploiting the inverse square law to promote control over positioning is pure genius.

smackfu• 13 years ago

Those little blocks look packed full of electronics. Only simple when you put a skin on it.

Surprisingly simple scheme for self-assembling robots

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