Smart sand & robot pebbles

MIT News - April 2, 2012

Imagine that you have a big box of sand in which you bury a tiny model of a footstool. A few seconds later, you reach into the box and pull out a full-size footstool: The sand has assembled itself into a large-scale replica of the model.

That may sound like a scene from a Harry Potter novel, but it's the vision animating a research project at the Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL) at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. At the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May — the world's premier robotics conference — DRL researchers will present a paper describing algorithms that could enable such "smart sand." They also describe experiments in which they tested the algorithms on somewhat larger particles — cubes about 10 millimeters to an edge, with rudimentary microprocessors inside and very unusual magnets on four of their sides.

Unlike many other approaches to reconfigurable robots, smart sand uses a subtractive method, akin to stone carving, rather than an additive method, akin to snapping LEGO blocks together. A heap of smart sand would be analogous to the rough block of stone that a sculptor begins with. The individual grains would pass messages back and forth and selectively attach to each other to form a three-dimensional object; the grains not necessary to build that object would simply fall away. When the object had served its purpose, it would be returned to the heap. Its constituent grains would detach from each other, becoming free to participate in the formation of a new shape.

Read more at MIT News: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/sm...
Still photos courtesy of M. Scott Brauer
Animation courtesy of Kyle Gilpin

• Category

  Science & Technology

[zassounotsukushi]

Just like the CDs and MP3s, the RIAA will have to have a close look at the robot pebbles to assure that they have sufficient DRM protections coded into it. Complete with backdoors for Federal authorities that allows prompt takedown, causing the bots in the replicated shape to automatically disassemble, and then surround the perpetrator while he/she sleeps, slowly suffocating them, inspired by bio-mimicry of the honeybees defense against invasive wasps.

[sebikazem]

Isn't that piracy? They have to make a law for restricted use of this technology.

[Matrix29bear]

YOUTUBE[ Human Dog Invasion of the Body Snatchers ]

YOUTUBE[ Invasion of the Body Snatchers clip, the transformation ]

[Matrix29bear]

1:09 -- Matthew Bennell: [Elizabeth and Matthew are captured by alien plant body snatcher copies of humans in the Health Department office. Kibner gives them sedatives, so that they can be snatched while asleep] Listen, we're not the last humans left. There are people who will fight you. They will find out what you're doing here.

Elizabeth Driscoll: They'll stop you.

Dr. David Kibner: In an hour... you won't want them to. In an hour, you'll be one of us.

[AshrafSpore]

We need Carter or maybe Rodney.

[1Shatter1]

lol throwing your coffee tables at couches, I finally have an excuse!!! :D

[1Shatter1]

nope, the world would run differently, instead of buying a product, you would download it and your smart pebbles(catoms) would create it -michio kaku

[bopitnews]

Wow very interesting and easy to understand

Not

[x89codered89x]

I don't exactly see how this algorithm translates into physical blocks copying an object... I think a full blown demonstration is in order.

[Revegeance]

Replicators....

[Rani L]

if they manage to scale the pebbles down to the size of granes it might be very interresting. certainly if you can store a certain form in the memory of the pebbles. you could make all your furniture of these grains and if you have friends over you can throw your coffee table to your 2- seat sofa and bam! you have a 5-seat sofa. and when you and your friends come home from the pub you press a button to rearrange your sofa as a guest bed.