Stochastic Self-Reconfigurable Modular Robots Build Themselves At Random
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 15 of November , 2007 at 5:44 am
Most types self-configuring modular robots (like these and these) divert a substantial amount of time and energy towards figuring out where they are and where they need to go in relation to their other pieces. If you make the modules small enough, though, they can take advantage of the random motions generated by their environment to move around. Give them a little bit of AI, and they’ll be able to build themselves up into large and complex structures simply by selectively attaching themselves to other modules. Although the principle of operation can be observed at macro sizes, stochastic robots get more efficient at smaller scales, since you can throw more of them into close proximity with each other, increasing the chances of a favorable configuration occurring. So, imagine that you need a nanobot to perform microsurgery on your brain… Instead of implanting the robot itself, you could just be injected with a bunch of stochastic modules. As the modules bounced around in your bloodstream, they’d gradually coalesce into a functional robot, which could perform its task, and then disassemble itself for disposal. Quick, clean, and easy.
[ Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab ]
Comments (1)
Category: Medical, Nano, Research
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Comment by Phil
Made Thursday, 15 of November , 2007 at 9:44 pm
I’m not entirely convinced that molecular assembly is feasible, so I don’t know if we could ever build something on the scale of, say, a self-assembling microbivore. I can imagine stochastic NEMS that might drift through the bloodstream and assemble once a month or something to clean arterial plaques. The real question is if we can ever build anything that is both small enough and smart enough to self-assemble without having to provide its own locomotion.