There’s the eavesdropping PoKeBo Cube, and then MIT’s self-assembling robotic cubes. Researchers from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) used magnetically reprogrammable materials to coat robotic cubes, enabling them to self-assemble and be highly selective about what they connect with. This makes reconfiguration into specific shapes and chosen configurations much easier than previous self-assembling modular robots.
This soft magnetic material coating was sourced from inexpensive refrigerator magnets, equipping each of the cubes with a magnetic signature on each of its faces. These signatures ensure that each face is selectively attractive to only one other face from all the other cubes for both translation and rotation. All of the cubes are capable of being magnetically programmed at a very fine resolution. If thrown into a water tank with a totally random disturbance, they’ll collide, but if they meet the wrong one, the cube drops off, and vice versa.
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Prior work in self-assembly has typically required individual parts to be geometrically dissimilar, just like puzzle pieces, which requires individual fabrication of all the parts. Using magnetic programs, however, we can bulk-manufacture homogeneous parts and program them to acquire specific target structures, and importantly, reprogram them to acquire new shapes later on without having to refabricate the parts anew,” said Martin Nisser, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).
