Unknown - Self-assembling Computer Memory Device
Archive for Robots - Nano
MultiScale Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich - StomachBot: Magnetic Self-Assembly of Swallowable Modular Robots
Modular robotic system that can be swallowed and will assemble inside the G.I. Tract for therapeutic and diagnostic procedures. This research involves the investigation of the self-assembly of the ARES robot inside the stomach. Using a specific magnet configuration on the connection face, assembly success rates of up to 90% are possible.
See website here
Technion University - Bloodstream Robots
Two Israeli scientists may have created the catalyst for a medical revolution with their new project: a tiny, 1-millimeter-diameter robot which is capable of crawling through human veins and arteries. The bot can cling to vessel walls using small, powerful arms which protrude from a hub in its center. Manned control is accomplished by using a magnetic field outside of the body, and the robot is able to swim against the flow of blood, as well as squeeze through a variety of arterial openings. Right now the doctors don’t know what the medical applications might be, though they speculate that a large number of the bots could be used to fight certain types of cancer. Other ideas on the table include using the bots to exact revenge on anyone opposing their crazy ideas.
more info here
DRL - Self-Reconfiguration Algorithms with Cellular Automata
Researchers at the Dartmouth Robotics Laboratory have tested a number of different algorithms on digital models to test how algorithms are able to adapt to different types of variable input. The idea is that simple algorithms that work for an idealized system can then be instantiated on to a variety of actual systems while retaining the correctness of the generic algorithms.
see more information here
Xerox Parc - Shape Planning Simulations
Researchers at Xerox Parc in Palo Alto have made a number of very interesting simulations for how objects could reconfigure to create new shapes. These are very useful showing the number of moves and relative time required to reconfigure swarms of objects.
Xerox Parc - Self-Assembling Lattice Reconfiguration Robot
Researchers at Xerox Parc have designed a reconfigurable robotic system based on the rhombic dodecahedron. While no working models of this system have been created (that we know of) the possibility of what could be done with this system is immense. Self similar modules have the ability to rotate around each other based on prescribed rules.
This projects was used as a precedent for a spatial project based on the rhombic dodecahedron module by Robert Miles Kemp for his thesis project on Meta-Morphic Reconfigurable Robots.
More information can be found here.
Video link here.
Xerox Parc - Digital Clay
Roboticists at Xerox Parc in Palo Alto have created modular intelligent robotic system. This system however does not use actuators but instead relies on users manipulating objects. These modules have the ability to sense each other and know if their are other objects around them. They use magnets to connect to each other.
see web link here.
see video here.
John Storrs Hall - Utility Fog
Utility Fog is a hypotehtical collection of tiny robots, envisioned by Dr. John Storrs Hall while he was thinking about a nanotechnological replacement for car seatbelts. The robots would be microscopic, with extending arms reaching in several different directions, and could perform lattice reconfiguration. Grabbers at the ends of the arms would allow the robots (or foglets) to mechanically link to one another and share both information and energy, enabling them to act as a continuous substance with mechanical and optical properties that could be varied over a wide range. Each foglet would have substantial computing power, and would be able to communicate with its neighbors.
While the foglets would be micro-scale, construction of the foglets would require full molecular nanotechnology. Each bot would be in the shape of a dodecahedron with 12 arms extending outwards. Each arm would have 4 degrees of freedom. When linked together the foglets would form an octet truss. The foglets’ bodies would be made of aluminum oxide rather than combustible diamond to avoid creating a fuel air explosive.
CCSL – Self Replication Robots
Zykov, Mytilinaios, Adams, and Lipson
Hod Lipson at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab created intelligent robotic modules that have the ability to recreate themselves. This system was designed so that the number of modules could grow thus making it possible for the system as a whole to have more variation at a larger scale. These robots were made using 3d printing technology compounded with individual microprocessors. Self-similar modules have the ability to wirelessly connect and reconnect through electro-magnetic male-female connections.
Interesting text from the author: Contrary to previously held views that self-replication is a property that a system either has or has not (”you can’t be half pregnant”), our theory suggests that it is actually a continuum, where different systems can self-reproduce to different extents. The extent to which a system is self replicating depends on things like how fast does it self replicate, how accurately does it self replicate, how dependent is it on its environment to self replicate, how complex are its building blocks, how complex it is itself, etc. etc. For example, crystals self replicate, but only in a solution; rabbits self-replicate - less accurately and more slowly than a crystal - but they are less dependent on having a specific environment.”
Video Links found here.
