With no external mechanism, each M-Block contains a flywheel that can reach speeds of 20,000 revoultiuons per minute. Image Credit: MIT
Researchers from MIT have developed a breakthrough robotic technology called M-Blocks; autonomous modular cubes that can change shape based upon the function it wishes to perform.
With robotic technologies able to perform the duties that they are manufactured to perform with excellent precision, there is often limited flexibility when it comes to varying tasks or industries.
With this in mind researchers have developed prototype robotic cubes that have no external moving parts.
It's one of these things that the community has been trying to do for a long time.
Daniela Rus - Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at MIT
Each M-Block contains a flywheel that can reach speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute allowing the miniature blocks to climb over and around one another, jump and spin across the ground.
“It’s one of these things that the [modular-robotics] community has been trying to do for a long time,” says Daniela Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of CSAIL (MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory). “We just needed a creative insight and somebody who was passionate enough to keep coming at it — despite being discouraged.”
M-Blocks could be used in contructions solutions to repair bridges and buildings.
Image Credit: MIT.
On each edge, and on every face, there are permanent magnets allowing the cubes to attach to one another. This also allows each block to be suspended upside down from metallic surfaces, enabling a greater number of duties that the technology can perform.
“There’s a point in time when the cube is essentially flying through the air,” says Kyle Gilpin, Postdoc at MIT. “And you are depending on the magnets to bring it into alignment when it lands. That’s something that’s totally unique to this system.”
In terms of potential duties that can be performed, M-Blocks could be used in construction, to repair buildings, bridges or raising scaffolding.
This technology could also be used in transportation, assembling into furniture or even be used in environments that humans cannot access allowing for testing and analysis.
The main goal would be to miniaturize M-Blocks even further and have a large number of miniature blocks that could perform many different tasks for many different areas. The simplistic concept of the M-Blocks could make this a real possibility.
Commands are currently given via wireless radio transmission but this could change to an algorithm.
Image Credit: MIT
Looking at the here and now, researchers are looking at ways robots can be more autonomous as currently, they move via commands from a wireless radio signal in each block. What researchers want to do is have an algorithm in each robot that will allow them to assemble themselves.
They could assemble into different types of furniture or heavy equipment. They could swarm into environments hostile or inaccessible to humans, diagnose problems, and reorganize themselves to provide solutions.
Small cubes that self-assemble
Video sourced from: YouTube - MIT
Sourced from: MIT Press Release