Announcing a group of self-assembling robots to form bridges and buildings,
A swarm of robots transform themselves into bridges,
buildings and vehicles and look like a scene from a science fiction movie.
Where researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the US Army are working on swarms of robots,
It is a group of mechanical metamaterials that can combine to form any structure.
The concept is as simple as opening a box,
flying a bunch of Lego-style building bricks and transforming itself into the shape of any structure you want.
And that’s not all, when these stones are finished as a building, they can be reconfigured independently to be a bridge or a boat.
Or they can also simply disassemble themselves and return to the storage bin until next use.
A research paper published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and the US Army Research Center presented a construction method for meta-mechanical materials,
Based on an outstanding assembly of a specific set of mass-produced standard parts.
The researchers experimentally demonstrated the desired metamaterial property for each type and part.
When combined with the results of numerical modeling, fragments exhibit many useful and unexpected properties.
Simply put, they’ve created a Lego-style set out of very strong,
easy-to-manipulate materials that can be mass-produced quickly and cheaply.
Self-assembling robots to form bridges and buildings
The system’s interlocking voxel pieces use unique AI-generated shapes at the cellular level to act like 3D-printed materials,
without the printer.
The research began as a thought experiment for the Army to develop the cheapest and fastest way for a robot swarm to build a bridge for troops but has the potential to transform the construction field.
While still in its infancy, the ultimate goal of the research is to produce self-assembling,
AI-powered building materials in the form of an adaptive robot swarm.
Not just for the armed forces, but if successful, the technology will revolutionize the construction industry.
Not only will this shorten construction time, but it will also reduce labor, resources and the overall carbon footprint.
Although the construction sector has been witnessing a large number of technological developments in recent times,
this sector is definitely going to be surprised by it.
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