Communications of the ACM
Shape-Shifting Robots
A prototype robot developed at MIT can automatically fold itself into an airplane or an origami boat.
MIT
By combining origami and electrical engineering, researchers at MIT and Harvard are working to develop the ultimate reconfigurable robot—one that can turn into absolutely anything.
The researchers have developed algorithms that, given a three-dimensional shape, can determine how to reproduce it by folding a sheet of semi-rigid material with a distinctive pattern of flexible creases. To test out their theories, they built a prototype that can automatically assume the shape of either an origami boat or a paper airplane when it receives different electrical signals. The researchers reported their results in the July 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As director of the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Professor Daniela Rus researches systems of robots that can work together to tackle complicated tasks. One of the big research areas in distributed robotics is what’s called “programmable matter,” the idea that small, uniform robots could snap together like intelligent Legos to create larger, more versatile robots.
From MIT News Office
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