Self-assembled moving cubes

John Romanishin and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said a new word in modular robotics. M-Block

robots are cubes with flywheels inside (at 20,000 rpm) and cylindrical magnets on the edges. The flywheel develops such a kinetic moment that after its braking, the cubes are not just rolling on the floor towards each other, but even spinning in place and jumping onto the "third floor". For example, in the photo above, the white cube jumped to the black one. That is, these are the world's first mobile self-assembled robots without moving parts outside the case.

M-Block robots are suitable for testing various automatic assembly algorithms. Each cube is capable of both individual and group movement together with other cubes.

How can they be applied in life? Theoretically, armies of such cubes can repair bridges or buildings in emergency situations. They can be assembled into furniture or equipment of the desired shape. If we reduce them to nanoscale, then we get exactly the "liquid metal", which many saw in the movie "Terminator-2."



A flywheel of 20 thousand revolutions is a key detail in the design of the block. To compensate for kinetic instability, cylindrical magnets on the edges are used. When the cubes approach each other, the magnets rotate naturally and turn opposite poles to each other.

On each face of the cube there are eight more point magnets, which are used to accurately connect the blocks.

To date, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has produced 100 cubes and algorithms to control their movement. They want to experiment with a system of many hundreds of cubes that randomly move around the room, are able to identify each of the "brothers" and quickly assemble in a structure like an armchair, staircase or table.

The presentation of scientific work on M-Block will take place at the international conference on robotics in Japan in November this year.