Last month several tech sites ran headlines about “3d Shape Shifting Robot Swarms”. We’ve also seen this begin to appear in many recent science fiction stories.
Goldstein calls the programmable matter claytronics and the tiny robots catoms. And it’s not all out of a sci-fi movie. Goldstein said. Working hand-in-hand with Intel Corp., the research team has made a lot of progress in getting the catoms to bond together and even share power.
Think of each catom as a tiny robot or computer that has computational power, memory and the ability to store and share power. Right now, each catom has 24 electromagnets around its circumference. Based on whether the electromagnets are powered on or off decides how the catoms are moved into position with each other. The robots will harness these forces to achieve their goals.
“They talk to each other all the time and move together or apart,” explained Goldstein. “In the long term, we’ll use electrostatic forces. We’ll create it by putting a voltage on them.” . . [ read more 3d Shape Shifting Robot Swarms ]
This technology is not as far fetched as it might seem at first blush. We’ve seen chairs that fall apart and put themselves back together. and NASA had a pyramid shape shifting robot in 2005 which they hope to miniaturize to nano scale. And a Xerox researcher built a shape shifting robot in 2000.
So shape shifting robots are closer than you think, and are you really sure that lamp on your desk is just a lamp?
More information:
York investigates evolving ’swarm’ robots
Swarm robotics work hundreds of robots into one
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