What if robots could reassemble themselves at will? The liquid metal cyborg in Terminator was terrifyingly useful. It could look like anyone, repair shotgun blasts, even turn its hand into a murderous icepick. And then of course, you’ve got Transformers, wherein alien robots morph from cars and trucks into giant humanoid fighting machines.
It isn’t liquid metal nor is it extraterrestrial, but MIT’s John Romanishin, Daniela Rus, and Kyle Gilpin think they’ve found a promising precursor to a similar technology.
By building simple, independent modules that can separate and recombine at will, you can design a robot of flexible functionality. Such modular robots have been around for a long time. Indeed, we’ve covered plenty in the past. But none are as simple as MIT’s M-Blocks, and it’s that simplicity that’s got folks excited.
The first thing you’ll notice about M-Blocks is how they move. All locomotion is self-containedthere are no external moving parts. Each block contains a 20,000 RPM flywheel which imparts angular momentum to each cube. They can move across the floor, roll over each other, and even leap about like a Mexican jumping bean.
Read also:
MIT's self-assembling robot cubes offer whiffs of Optimus Prime (Wired.co.uk)
Robot blocks magically turn themselves into absolutely anything (DVICE)
MIT deploys swarm of self-assembling robot cubes | Automaton (Robohub)
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