12 ms·
Surprisingly simple scheme for self-assembling robots
- otoburb 13y agoIf they can figure out how to wirelessly power the cubes, or allow connected cubes to power each other via conductivity (perhaps at the cube edges), then the self-assembly of the bridge at the scale they're aiming for makes much more sense. Hitting on the flywheel as the core mechanism for locomotion was amazing.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoPeople 5 centuries from now will look into 20th and 21st century robotics forays in much the same way as we look at Babbage or Heron's steam-engine. Clever, perhaps ingenious, but hopeless with current technology.
- unwind 13y agoAlright, so what do you propose robot researchers do? Just sit around, somehow waiting for technology to magically improve? I might be naive, but I like to think of things like this research as the way to get the technology to improve. It's not as if technology has a life of its own and will just improve regardless.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoI propose that they go fishing and wait it out till there's some game-changing breakthrough in some underlying technology. I'm not sure which are the right underlying technologies in much the same way as Babbage's critics couldn't identify "integrated circuit" as the missing enabler. Could be advances in materials, nanotechnology, even biotechnology. What I know for sure is that when these breakthroughs do happen, all 20th and 21st robotics "pioneering" work will become obsolete and will not serve future practitioners. Robotics is not like mathematics where you can lay a foundation that'll still be relevant and useful to people 10 or 20 centuries down the line. If Babbage instead of fussing with mechanical cranks and gears had invented the Turing machine his life's work wouldn't have gone to waste.
- jlarocco 13y agoIf they can't identify the "missing enabler," then how are they to know it's missing? Breakthroughs don't just happen and change everything. In almost every case there's a lot of background work, like this stuff, that builds up to the breakthrough.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoThey don't have to identify it and they don't have to know it's missing. My whole point is that the breakthroughs will happen in some other technology tree, and they will most likely occur in the context of some more mundane, profit-seeking commercial endeavors, in much the same way that advances in metallurgy and machine tool technology enabled the steam engine although the basic principle and some crude prototypes were already available since classical antiquity. What's been happening since the 1950s in robotics (I am not talking Toyota car factory robotics) is simply a misallocation of taxpayer's capital and hurts science and technological advancement since it fails to allocate research capital in the way most likely to lead to sustainable, economically exploitable breakthroughs. Of course all that pales in comparison to money wasted in social "sciences" etc.
- pjc50 13y agoThis is not only unsupported assertion but moving the goalposts so far that one of them is in orbit.
- streety 13y agoCould a similar statement not be made for all the enabling technologies? If all the materials scientists, nanotechnologists, and biotechnologists went fishing as well I suspect the future would look a lot like the present.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoNo, a similar statement cannot be made because there's a difference between hunting Chimeras and doing research when there's profit to be made (even when gambling with high-risk research). That's the litmus test. If there's a plausible expectation for profit, or even tax-funded / subsidized applications, then that means that goal is not entirely unrealistic in our technological era. Otherwise, try again next century.
- mikeash 13y agoWhat do you mean by "robotics", exactly? I assume you're using some definition that excludes the millions of industrial robots being put to productive use every day. But I don't know what that definition would be. I'm typing on a computer in large part assembled by robots. Earlier, I took a call on a phone in large part assembled by robots. This morning, I drove a car in large part assembled by robots. It's hard to see how the current state of robots could possibly be described as "hopeless".
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoI am not talking about car factory "robots" (i.e. machines with articulated, arm-like, parts).
- mikeash 13y agoWell yes, I figured that out. But my question is, what are you talking about that doesn't include those?
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoIsaac Asimov type robots, not necessary anthropomorphic, minus the sentience / self-awareness crap.
- mikeash 13y agoI still don't get it. If you start with an Asimov robot, then take away the anthropomorphism and the sentience, what remains that isn't found in a modern car factory?
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoAbility to move independently, with their own power source, be able to navigate our environment, homes, use our tools and do our bidding, following simple commands. It is likely that some DNA-engineered chimp/machine hybrid will probably become the first real robot exposing the folly of today's mechanical / electrical attempts in much the same way as we now know that the Analytical Machine was unrealistic with 19th century clockwork technology.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoIf you're really going to propose that technology and science will advance that much, then I feel compelled to counter that people five centuries from now will look back on 20th and 21st century robotics forays and pity us for having to live in such tiny, stupid, chaotic brains. They'll wonder how we ever accomplished anything while so congenitally incapable of proper thought or feeling. Hint: the lesson is never to make futurist predictions, because they're almost never coherent.
- gfodor 13y agoIt sounds like you are making a prediction about how coherent futurist predictions will seem in the future :)
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoPrediction: even in the future, the Kwisatz Haderach will not happen. Attempting to predict the other predictors, who are also trying to predict you, leads to some nasty, headachey recursion issues.
- cjh_ 13y agoIt is possible that the current tech used in robotics will somehow form the basis for the work over the next 1000 years or so, either directly or via some tangential discovery by researchers working with current tech. Without the benefit of hindsight it is impossible to tell with certainty what techs are worthwhile exploring and what should simply be discarded, the idea of discarding is of course based on the false assumption that techs that are later unused never had a use (e.g. we may solve a software problem with current tech that will form the basis for future robotics software).
- transfire 13y agoScale size down 10 to 100 fold, add LCD faces and orchestrate a million of them, then Holy Molly!
- yk 13y agoThat will give the SPAM-Wave a hole new meaning.
- yk 13y agoThis is a great demo. However I wonder, with one flywheel, they should only be able to rotate the individual robots along a single plane? ( And I am somewhat curious, what collective motion of more than one robot looks like. )
- menage 13y agoPresumably the flywheel axis can be rotated internally.
- thedufer 13y agoFrom the one look of the internals (1:50 in the video), there does not appear to be room to rotate the flywheel axis. That said, I would expect that is where they're headed when they can figure out how to use some of the space more efficiently.
- olefoo 13y agoYou could have three sets of contra-rotating flywheels, which would give you much finer grain control of the motion.
- thedufer 13y agoI thought about this possibility, but having 3 flywheels increases the weight, which decreases the maximum angular momentum / weight that could be applied around a given axis. This is, I believe, the relevant quantity if you want to know how far a cube could jump in a different direction. If the flywheel could rotate on two axes (and spin on the third, presumably), you would still have full control on which direction you apply forces.
- scotty79 13y agoI think it can rotate only around single axis, other blocks can rotate axis of that block if they themselves can rotate around different axes.
- 13y ago
- HPLovecraft 13y agoRoger Waters would LOVE these for his Live Wall show lol
- codereflection 13y agoI love this. Another great example of being told "that can't be done", and getting to prove those naysayers wrong.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoThis is the kind of stuff we mean when we say, "Go beyond the impossible, and kick logic to the curb." Kol ha'kavod!
- ChuckMcM 13y agoOk, that is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Love the comment that they haven't taken to heart the Replicator storyline from SG-1. The idea of exploiting the inverse square law to promote control over positioning is pure genius.
- smackfu 13y agoThose little blocks look packed full of electronics. Only simple when you put a skin on it.