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Transforming Robots: Smart Blocks 48

Posted by timothy from the time-to-market? dept.
Andy Smith writes: "The BBC reports that researchers from Dartmough College in New Hampshire aim to create robots made from 'smart building blocks.' The idea is that the robots can then transform into other objects. According to the story, the reseachers eventually 'hope to use thousands of microscopic units to make infinitely flexible machines, fit for any task'. The article goes into a lot more detail about how the units will work, and the research that is currently being done."
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Transforming Robots: Smart Blocks More

Transforming Robots: Smart Blocks

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  • Gemini isn't a true "modular robot"- it's two identical robots.
  • How can you associate Ashcroft with the devil?
    I dont think its nice to insult "The Devil" with such a low blow.


    Fight censors!
  • Will the Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons?

    --
  • I wonder... it seems like a very nifty idea, but I don't think these smart morphing robot appliances will be a practicality, not for a long, long time, perhaps not ever. Even if the robots can be made to intelligently morph themselves into an appropriate form for the job at hand, without "real" AI, they'll be incapable of any useful work. At best, they'll need constant supervision (do I really want my lawnmower to blithely slash through power lines, my garden hose, the flower bed, or my neighbour's garden?) And AI of the sort necessary for all but the simplest jobs is still very far off. Especially the sort of generic, non-specialized intelligence that would be required for this type of multi-purpose appliance.
    --
  • but you can't say the idea lacks the need for further research. I started making some designs myself that I was intending to put together with lego mindstorms before i got wrapped up in other things. I dont know, there just seems to be something about it that says its 'too easy'. Either it WILL be breakthrough and our foundation for nanotechnology OR some fundamental law of physics will prevent it. I get this feeling because the more engineering i put into the designs the further the goal moved back, much like someone trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. I could very well be wrong though.

  • Do we have to control the modular parts with a modular program? .NET Bots...

    NOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!

    Wakes up in cold sweat

  • "Transformers, more than meets the eye!" (; Lisa
  • motomannequin wrote:
    "I cannot morph, yet I am suitable to many varied tasks." and "They will not be able to make a robust system by trying to control these "building blocks" from the top down. The cells in our body are not being told by a controller that they are an arm, or a kidney, the information is stored in the DNA. Yet our bodies do have arms and kidneys."

    we weren't able to make airplanes until we realized that trying to mimic a bird wasn't the best way to go. while i do agree that centralized, dna-ish control is the way to go, i'm not willing to rule out a top-down (or heretofore unthought-of) method of working this. where would we be if we were still trying to make 747's flap?

    My .02,

  • .NET bots? Don't MCSE training courses already make these?

    -Nev
  • Upon reading this article, I couldn't help but flash-back to an article posted on Slashdot in the past few months. Seems the Re-Configurable Robot is a popular project now.

    See the /. posting on the CONRO project, a joint USC/ISI project:
    http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/26/0750248.shtm l [slashdot.org]

    Or go directly to the CONRO Website:
    http://www.isi.edu/conro/ [isi.edu]

    -Z

  • This is all wrong.. What you need is a format in which some kind of central processor or remote can can tell each module the "Big Picture" of the morph. Maybe by wireless control.

    Then each module should then discover where it is at in the current "Big Picture" then decide at a random interval to choose to be some other part/position in the new "Big Picture", and then it should broadcast to the rest that it is whatever part.

    Since the modules are changing at a random interval, the ones who havent morphed/decided on what to be have received the notice that other modules have become some type of part, and crossed it out on the list of parts in the "Big Picture" then decide from what hasnt been used yet, to be come one.

    After a few hundred cycles they should be able to complete the form required. This would be better and quicker than than each module making a call to a central system and waiting for a response. Although, the method I described would require every unit to have some smarts (we couldnt call them cpu's cuz they would now be decentralized :P DPU maybe?)

    As for powering, maybe place the central system somewhere in the mass with battery power (maybe with solar cells) and have each module make power connects with other modules to connect to the central system. This could also be setup where you can place solar cells on the modules, while removing the wireless crap and using the power leads for signalling (that might help keep ppl from stealing modules from one unit to another.. Might need a litte dose of keycodes/serials/encryption)

    I thought on this before when I saw a Stargate SG-1 episode with some type of modular pesky robots. Very fun episode. Only diff was the modules themselves would do all the processing themselves, (very good AI Im sure). They also were supposed to be able to create more of themselves by consuming metals. Just 2 modules is all it took to start a rampage.

    So, you saw it here.. on Slashdot, now archived on hundreds of thousands of computer caches (for a few days), as well as slashdot's archival system (for a few months).

    If one of the science dudes read this stuff, I really wouldnt mind changing careers to robotics if theres an offer. :)

  • T2 (Score:2)

    by twisty ( 179219 )
    This very sort of component would be just what is needed to build the Liquid Metal Guy from Terminator 2... on the right scale. If you think about it, the movable components would have to be on the same scale as organic cells more or less. They'd also need some kind of peer-to-peer network to coordinate their composition as well as distribute memory. (A tall order, but this is a much-needed step.)

    The Philosophy of the design has a lot of merit too. I remember a music composition program called Bars and Pipes on my old Amiga. It made numerous effects possible, and easy, by letting you drop the gizmos of your choice into the pipeline. It's also a reason I'm migrating development from Windows over to Linux, because the latter has a much better grasp of piping one universal tool's output into the input of another.

  • The idea that that N+1 machines can be made from N components is particuarly interesting EVEN IF they're dumb and can only form pre-programmed forms to do pre-programmed jobs; with the ability to change by themselves, it could be great for pre-assembly of stuff for a Mars colony. Sending a set of components that could do a basic job and then transform later into other machines to do other jobs (with perhaps the addition of more complex modules or smarter modules later on) seems advantageous considering the difficulty of getting stuff to Mars in the first place.

  • Let's not forget the nanites of the SOL who sound suspicioulsy like the cast.
  • I wonder... it seems like a very nifty idea, but I don't think these smart morphing robot appliances will be a practicality, not for a long, long time, perhaps not ever. Even if the robots can be made to intelligently morph themselves into an appropriate form for the job at hand, without "real" AI, they'll be incapable of any useful work. At best, they'll need constant supervision (do I really want my lawnmower to blithely slash through power lines, my garden hose, the flower bed, or my neighbour's garden?) And AI of the sort necessary for all but the simplest jobs is still very far off. Especially the sort of generic, non-specialized intelligence that would be required for this type of multi-purpose appliance.


    I think the true commercial application for this technology beyond the benefits to military and scientific equipment will be the Multi-Shovel or some such thing. You have a little grey box, it has on it a panel with some selection mechanism. You can choose 'Rake', 'Shovel', 'Hoe', 'Hedge Clippers', 'Post Hole Digger', etc... And then you watch as the little thing constructs from pre defined plans the selected item.
    That way you just spend 1500$ for this one item and it can act as a few dozen different tools. You could get updates to the plans to have it become new stuff, and you could increase or decrease the mass of the cube to have it make smaller or larger items by adding or removing blocks of the little bots.
    I know this isn't doable now, but I think this technology might head in that direction for home use once it makes it down that far.

    Kintanon
  • This is rather like the robot snake [slashdot.org], and indeed similar 'robots' can transform [abc.net.au] (This one by Xerox). Not exactly orignial, and the miniturisation seems to be little more than hype at the moment.

    -----
    "Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
  • What if the whiny kids are playing out on the lawn? MWAhahahahahahahahahahahahaha - Evil laugh (c)1999

  • do we see a trend here? (Score:3)

    by giberti ( 110903 ) on Saturday January 20, 2001 @04:45AM (#494226) Homepage
    This is not the first slash story about a product like this. There are some great video's of this sort of robot in action, running sin wave's for movement. The originial /. story here [slashdot.org]. And the CONRO original site which has some interesting videos if you have the bandwith to download them here [isi.edu].
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion


  • So After 15 hours of webdesign ending right now (must sleep)... I ask:

    I wonder how long it will be untill we can simply push the "condom" button after our partner says yes... Just think! We could have safe sex with out have to worry about holes! Perhaps even layer the "condom" so its soft on both sides but has a current of 110 volts in the middle, so if it breaks it will shock the hell out of both people (or more).
    So using this tech, I wonder if I could simulate a much larger errection that could then bend around and type a link to Goat Sex [goatse.cx]


    No, I am not trolling, I really want to have a condom that is easy to put on and one that will resize to fix your "member" as it grows (preventing breaks). Perhaps something similar is already out.. anyone?

    On a related note I just got my nipples percied. I wonder; when I hook up a current to the rings (eg clips and a 9v), will the rings lower the resistance of my body, and make it easier to stop my heart? What would be safe? Any links? Also, who the fuck started goatse?


    Fight censors!

  • It's "Dartmouth". (Score:4)

    by Alik ( 81811 ) on Saturday January 20, 2001 @07:49AM (#494229)
    Dartmough? Feh. They mean Dartmouth College [dartmouth.edu], my very own alma mater. I graduated in the same class as the guy who built the little block they show in the picture.

    Yes, the idea of miniaturization is kind of hype. OTOH, Daniela trained under Dartmouth's MEMS guy back at Cornell, so she has some contacts in the field. He's already built (years ago, actually) prototypes of these "smart manipulating surfaces". They look like just a flat chip, but when powered, they'll spin things around, act as conveyor belts, and generally create 2D "force fields".

    Shrinking the things isn't the issue. Even if they're an inch cubed, they could still be useful, especially if we borrowed from Lego the idea of having a few "special bricks". The problem is control. Can you imagine having to specify your body one cell at a time? These things are going to need to be able to work out where they should be with minimal cues from the central brain. She does have some work in the field (algorithms to move around furniture with a team of robots, all of whom have limited sensing and communications power; also, the stuff I worked on with transportable agents [dartmouth.edu]), but there's a long way to go.

    Her own page on the subject is here [dartmouth.edu].
  • We can split them into two teams, call them autobots and descepticons and we'll have our very own transformers!
  • The Transformers Robots In Disguise The Transformers More Than Meets The Eye!
  • I remember reading about a guy who did his Phd on this at least 5 years ago. He intended making cubes, each containing a microcontroller, power and motors and connectors (electrical and mechanical) so they could interconnect and execute a generic command given to the whole pile of blocks. The would slide over each other and move by sort of flowing along the ground. I think there was an picture of it too, maybe this was in New Scientist? He only managed to make about 6 cubes in his 4 yr Phd(!), each about 4 inches on a side, made of precision engineered parts. He had hoped to shrink it to 1cm cubed (and eventually much smaller, but this was before people were really thinking of micro mechanical stuff too seriously, and he ran out of time anyway).

    Anyone else recall this?

  • This is exactly how we should be thinking about robots -- thinking in small pieces that work together.

    Too often we try to build the entire thing (like the incredible walking robot Honda made). But think about how humans or any other animal works; We are made of a lot of small pieces that work together to create the whole. Machines break all the time, often requiring a lot of maintenance and care to get to work. But just think of how incredible it is that you never have to think about how your insides work -- you eat food, and it makes it through your system, your body takes what you need and separates and expels solid and liquid waste. It is amazing how often we use this system without needing any maintenence.

  • Asimov (Score:2)

    by MouseR ( 3264 )
    This is straight out of Asimov's Robot City.

    It's a moderatly good read from an Asimov original idea, presented by him but written by a pletora of other sci-fi writers such as Stephen Leigh and William F. Wu.

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
  • I can't help but think these designs will require wireless transmission to reach their full potential. With wireless, you can do away with all electrical interconnections between modules (assuming they're self-powered). This means your only remaining concern is structural connections, and that's going to make the design alot easier.

  • speaking of robert patrick, i'm still waiting for the writers to fit in the line: "have you seen this boy?" in the new x-files episodes. i was hoping for it in the early episodes with Gibson, but i was let down.
  • Nanobots, transform and er... move out! :)
  • Greetings, Widge.

    I guess I just don't have enough insight to see why this is useful... computers are getting fast enough now that we can simulate the parallel computability (i.e. traveling salesman simulations) of these cells without actually having to make them. As for "smart manipulating surfaces", sometimes it's just cheaper to make a couple interchangeable surfaces with a different functions. But it is pretty cool.

  • Shouldn't you be graduated by now?

    You're right; we can simulate the behavior of the cells in order to work out control algorithms for them. They've actually done some of that; Daniela has some animations of some of the older modular designs carrying out simple functions like climbing stairs. (I think they're on that webpage link.)

    However, as I have learned in my attempts at robotics, simulation often doesn't mean jack shit. It's still basically impossible to simulate all the nastiness of the physical world, so in the end, you've got to put them out there and see what breaks. (As an example: when I took CS88 from her, we built Legobots. The IR sensor I made was actually sensitive to the color of the brick in which it was embedded; it only worked in blue bricks. Probably a function of the absorption/reflection of the dye, but who the hell's going to code that into a simulator?)

    Moreover, in the end, if you want to use them, you've gotta make them. Therefore, it makes more sense (IMHO) to deal with the real-world issues up front rather than gluing them into idealized code at the last minute.

    WRT to the surfaces... each one *can* do multiple things. Think of them as a set of "motion pixels" with almost-arbitrary pushing abilitity. The same chip can be a conveyor, an agitator, an aligner, or several other things, depending on what the control code tells the pixels to do.

    BTW, thinking of Dartmouth in the news... did you realize that our very own Marty Vona, architect of the most recent modular robot unit, is also the man who hacked the Billy Bass? Every time I start to feel competent, I just need to look at what he's up to.

  • Morphability is cool and all, but I think that it would be far more useful to build a robot in human form. Such a robot could use existing tools, essentially making it modular.

    A morphing robot would (ultimately) outstrip any modular robot in usefulness, but I think the research and fabrication costs of such a robot are gigantic in comparison to simply building a human-shaped robot. A humaniform robot (to borrow Asimov's term) can instantly use of all our human tools, making itself useful very quickly.

    --

  • Joseph Michaels used to haunt sci.space.polic, too. Long, long rants about making F1 (Saturn V) engines out of these shape-changing robots that would then transform into other devices on orbit, blah blah blah. For hundreds of kilobytes.
    IIRC, he has also been on one of those Discovery/TLC documentaries, going on about the Amazing Fractal Robots that will revolutionzie everything.
    He seems good at publicizing himself, if nothing else.
  • like those robotic spider things in stargate? no thanks...
  • Mattel has now bought this technology to replace their aging line of transformers. In it's place it will introduce MegaTelevision leader of the Deceptijons and Optimus-Prime-Time leader of the autopots. Mattel does warn that pets be kept in a seperate room
  • The nanobots have escaped from Red Dwarf!
  • I believe the first release of the transforming robots will include, a complementary leather jacket, sunglasses and a shotgun for it's new owner. These are to be used in cases where the new robot gets out of hand a tries to terminate the family.
  • Morphing robots would be cool; however, later on in the article we find that she actually means 'modular'. While cool in and of itself, this is a bit of a disappointment. Instead of turning into Robert Patrick and trying to kill whiny kids, all it'll do is plug a shears into one of its appendages and mow the lawn. How downletting is that?
  • As a fan of the BBC TV-program "Robot Wars", I can comment that one of the more succesfull experimental 'bots driving around in the show (all homebuilt by the contestants) is actually a simple modular bot (Gemini? if memory serves me right) consisting of two parts that can disconnect and function independantly, allthough I havn't seen them re-connect "on camera".

  • Anime U (Score:3)

    by Paladin128 ( 203968 ) <aaron.traas@org> on Saturday January 20, 2001 @05:04AM (#494249) Homepage
    In the newly formed Anime U, found in Neo-hyper-mega-Tokyo IX, Will add this to there curriculum for a BS in Ultrapower Combat Engineering. The new class will be called Morphing Metcha Design. It's pre-requisites will be:
    • Bypassing Newton's 1st and 3rd Laws II
    • Changing gravitational constants via martial arts.
    • Advanced Transformable Mecha
    • Improbable Hair


    "Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
  • Isn't that by Hasbro and not Mattel?

  • Scientists are starting to make robots out of smart building blocks

    Does this remind you of your OO classes ?!? *grin*

  • I saw a live demo of Mark Yim's modular reconfigurable robots [xerox.com] when I was an intern there. When I was there, they still seemed to have some trouble getting the robot to walk or crawl. It worked great as a wheel or a snake though.
  • No, she means modular AND morphing. Read it again - the idea is that eventually robots will be made out of small modules that they can reconfigure and move around.... so they can morph.

    This isn't new though - they were discussing this when I did a course in A.I. At Edinburgh Uni about 5 years ago! Maybe Dartmough College are up for a funding review?

  • There is a guy here in the UK called J. Michael (I forget his first name) who has been trying to sell something he calls "fractal robotics" for years. The whole thing is a big joke in the robotics industry as he's yet to demonstrate any actual working hardware despite often claiming that he has received large amounts of investment from respected companies and that fractal robotics is "the next big thing" which will revolutionise agriculture, space exporation, construction, etc. For a while at least, he used to regularly troll comp.robotics.misc and uk.misc with lengthy articles about how NASA is digging it's own grave by refusing to invest in his company. He even got published in a hobbyist electronics magazine several years ago. He has a web site [demon.co.uk] where you can see obviously fake video clips of a "prototype fractal robot" in operation and read lots of propaganda.

  • AI is more important than "morphing" (Score:4)

    by MotoMannequin ( 112293 ) on Saturday January 20, 2001 @06:53AM (#494255)
    I cannot morph, yet I am suitable to many varied tasks. An application to this type of technology may be to produce a robot that can repair itself when it is damaged, but comments from the article make me doubt they are on the right track:

    She suspects that a process of top-down planning that "cascades" the process of form-changing will be needed to make the system change shape quickly.

    They will not be able to make a robust system by trying to control these "building blocks" from the top down. The cells in our body are not being told by a controller that they are an arm, or a kidney, the information is stored in the DNA. Yet our bodies do have arms and kidneys.

    Interesting research [santafe.edu] into complex systems has shown that robust systems are not controlled top-down, but are the emergent properties of lost of small agents that are reacting with each other based on a simple set of rules.

    This type of research is the holy grail for scientists in this field, but we are still stumbling on much simpler problems right now.

    Moto Mannequin

    "With all appliances, and means to boot!" - William Shakespeare

  • Dartmough College... has "..got the touch...got the POOOWWWEEEEEER... YEAH!"

    Now if we could only get 5 of these transforming robot;s to form one giant Devastator robot, we'd be in business...

    Besides the answer to "what is the matrix" is in the Transformers The Movie, not the keanu flick =P

    E.

    www.randomdrivel.com [randomdrivel.com] -- All that is NOT fit to link to

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