Programmable matter, it seems, could be at the heart of Earth’s future. Imagine thousands of nanobots assembling and disassembling on command to create the most efficient shape to ascend into orbit, creating a vehicle or a table and chair for astronauts to study an asteroid… Frankly, just knowing that such a possibility exists is more than enough to generate excitement. can be said to be.
And this is possible thanks to a few MIT students. According to new information, a group of MIT students is working with a team to invent new ways to control and move microbots. The results of the study reveal a very hopeful approach to the technologies of the future.
Can play an important role in space studies
One of the students working with the team, Martin Nisser, a PhD student at MIT, is in a sense “a kind of recyclable 3D printing”. ” expresses what they want to create. While this invention, called ElectroVoxel (voxels = volumetric pixels), is still in the testing phase, Nisser notes that he has found a new way that allows ElectroVoxels to reconfigure themselves quickly and economically.
During a podcast he participated in, “One of the biggest challenges with rebuildable robots is that if you want each of these little modules to be able to move by itself, you have to put computation, electronic sensors, actuators in each module, and it’s really hard to do that as the modules get smaller and smaller, “The main technical contribution we’ve developed is to find a way to put electromagnets in these modules to perform the reconfiguration… which is good, because these electromagnets are really cheap, they’re easy to manufacture, and they don’t require much maintenance.”
Existing prototypes, which are approximately six centimeters long, have embedded electromagnets on each of their 12 sides, with the addition of a microcontroller and integrated circuits that allow to regulate the direction of current flowing through the electromagnets, allowing the ElectroVoxels to rotate around a shared axis and
ElectroVoxels move a bit too slow for now
But MIT says current shape-shifting modular robots are relatively bulky, so they’re built with large, expensive motors to facilitate mobility, making modular robots slow. Nisser said, “If each of these cubes can rotate relative to its neighbors, it’s actually first Request your 3D structure for any other You can reconstruct the connected 3D structure”. This can be very useful for non-standard instruments, to rearrange mass to create rotational motions to initiate a kind of artificial gravity via centrifugal force, or to place mass between you and a dangerous solar flare.
ElectroVoxels are relatively large for now, meaning any build they create will be pretty rough and rough. Which means Nisser and his team need to scale them down to make them truly usable. However, it is stated that in the future, some modules will be able to carry a number of vehicles and tools, while some will store power in batteries, while others will capture energy with solar panels. Of course, a lot of work needs to be done for all of this to happen.
But it still doesn’t change the fact that this invention could have a life-saving place in the future, where it’s impossible for us to order a spare part and get it delivered tomorrow, especially in outer space. Stating that space is kind of the last limit of fabrication and it is extremely difficult to build things there, Nissen said, “So it’s really advantageous if you can do your own assemblies without having to send astronauts there – which is very dangerous – and without having to send everything in one go. And, somewhat paradoxically, while reconfiguration is a very advantageous environment, reconfiguration is actually a lot simpler in a way… because in a microgravity environment, you don’t have to fight gravity vectors.” uses expressions.
A video showing the status of the project was also shared before:
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