Swarm
World’s Smallest Robot With Gripper
At 1/20th of a cubic inch, this may be the world’s smallest wheeled robot with a gripper. The video shows it picking up and moving an 8 pin integrated circuit. Details on how to build it at instructables. Here is another video.
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Lego Structural Visualizations
Awesome representation of legos building structures in real-time. Great visualization of how small scale nano robot structures could be built in ral-time. 1500 hours of moving legobricks and individual photos splced together.
Swarm-like Printing Machines by Mark Bearak
Interesting swarm-like printing machines developed by Mark Bearak at Columbia School of Architecture taught by Francois Roche. Website describing the project can be found here.
No Comments »Spatial Robot Prototypes by Miles Kemp
Nano Meta-morphic Architecture consists of a palette of small-scale self-similar robotic modules that have the ability to dynamically move and attach to other modules to create different configurations in real-time. Each module has a different material on its exterior, various hardware (sensors, accelerometers, computation and kinetics) and computational logic to enable it to interpret and physically respond to different local and global inputs. Inhabitants can use hundreds of thousands of these modules to create and recreate dynamic real-time formations. This project included the design of the overall geometry, logic and behavior of the modules as well as the creation and development of fully working prototypes. Project link at Series Design/Build and Variate Labs.
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Nanorobot Structures
Video of four stress-engineered microrobots assembling a planar structure, recorded through an optical microscope. The dimensions of each robot are 260 x 60 x 10 micrometers, and the dimensions of the final assembled shape are (approximately) 260 x 240 x 10 micrometers. The assembly is performed entirely within a 2 mm squared area. Compliance, as well a motion planning control strategy are used to ensure high docking accuracy. All robots are controlled using a single global control signal, provided through the operating environment.
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Nano Air Vehicle by AeroVironment
AeroVironment has developed a small flying robot, “nano air vehicle” (NAV) designed to fly indoors. “Testing culminated in a 20sec flight of an interim test vehicle, called Mercury, which demonstrated controlled hovering flight using a pair of flapping wings for propulsion and control. AeroVironment is now building a prototype for DARPA that will be samller, lighter and will closley resemble a hummingbird.” Great potential for precision mobility in small scale robots.
No Comments »Miles Kemp Featured on City of Sound
Miles was featured on City of Sound. Thanks Dan Hill! Quote from the feature: “Robert Miles Kemp’s talk was always interesting and occasionally spellbinding, most of all when showing the work in responsive robotic structures. His videos of simple blocks self-assembling into what he called “nano-architecture” are quite extraordinary… Kemp situated this within a wider context of interactive and informational architecture, centred around his work at Variate Labs and renowned new media deisgn firm Schematic (and his blog, Spatial Robots) described in a consistently interesting talk, covering many of the primary themes in contemporary interface design – and indeed extending the idea of where and what interfaces are.”
