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| The tiny robot is powered by magnets |
It may not look like a
character from the Transformer franchise, but a tiny robot made in the US is
able to change shape.
Built at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it uses magnets to mimic molecules
that fold themselves into complex shapes.
The research could
lead to robots that could be reconfigured to perform many different tasks.
But one expert said a
lot of work was still needed.
Part-funded by the US
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research was presented at the
2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems conference.
"It's effectively
a one-dimensional robot that can be made in a continuous strip, without
conventionally moving parts, and then folded into arbitrary shapes," said
one of the researchers, Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT's Center for Bits and
Atoms.
To fold itself into a
new shape, the device uses an "electro-permanent" motor - similar to
the electromagnets used in scrapyards to lift cars.
It is composed of
pairs of a powerful permanent magnet and a weaker magnet with a magnetic field
that changes direction when an electric current is applied.
The magnetic fields of
each magnet either add up or cancel each other, making the robot move.
Research race
The prototype comes a
year after the same team published a theory it was possible to create any 3D
shape by folding a sufficiently long string of subunits.
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| Robots in the Transformer series easily change their shapes |
Jeremy Pitt, deputy
head of the Intelligent Systems and Networks Group at Imperial College London,
said it would be challenging for such a robot to work alongside
artificial-intelligence machines, but the technology could have many real-world
applications.
"It is a
fascinating example of what happens when mathematical proof, that an arbitrary
3D shape can be built from a sufficiently long string, meets engineering
innovation - the miniaturisation of motors and magnets and the minimisation of
power consumption," he said.
"There is going
to be an interesting research race between groups trying to create
reconfigurable structures out of such chains and those trying to build them out
of independent self-assembling units."
good work
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