Back in 2011 Romanshin was just a senior at MIT. That’s when he came to his advisor with an idea. John imagined a cube shaped robot that could climb, jump, and move, all without the use of external moving parts.
At first Romanshin’s advisor, Daniela Rus, told him his idea would be impossible to build. But two years later, Romanishin is set to officially unveil his robot at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
Called M-Blocks, Romanshin’s robots look relatively simple. And they are. Built around a cube form with magnetic sides and corners, the hollow robots contain a flywheel that can spin at speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute. Once set in motion the flywheel can be braked, sending the M-Block flying in any direction. If two cubes come in contact with one another, their magnetic sides help them snap together forming a single, moveable unit.
According to Hod Lipson, a robotics researcher at Cornell, Romanshin’s robots are important because they demonstrate a robotic system that can move and self-assemble in several different ways. “What [Romanshin] did that was very interesting is [he] showed several modes of locomotion,” Lipson explained, “Not just one cube flipping around, but multiple cubes working together, multiple cubes moving other cubes — a lot of other modes of motion that really open the door to many, many applications, much beyond what people usually consider when they talk about self-assembly. They rarely think about parts dragging other parts — this kind of cooperative group behavior.”
Researchers are hoping to miniaturize M-Block-like robots. If successful, roboticists believe these M-Block-like robots could be used to create swarms of self-assembling micro-bots that would act like the liquid metal the T-1000 used to assemble itself in Terminator II.
Robots with that capability could be used to temporarily repair damaged infrastructure, configure itself into machinery on-demand and, of course, turn itself into an indestructible war machine hell bent on killing John Connor.
Images Courtesy of MIT