<p>Scientists have developed new Terminator-style cube-shaped robots that can leap through the air, jump on top of each other and assemble together to form arbitrary shapes.<br /><br /></p>.<p>A more refined version of the robots could temporarily repair bridges or buildings during emergencies, or assemble into different types of furniture or heavy equipment as needed, researchers believe.<br /><br />Developed by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the robots, known as M-Blocks, are cubes with no external moving parts.<br /><br />They are able to climb over and around one another, leap through the air, roll across the ground, and even move while suspended upside down from metallic surfaces, researchers said.<br /><br />Inside each robot is a flywheel that can reach speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute; when the flywheel is braked, it imparts its angular momentum to the cube.<br /><br />On each edge of an M-Block, and on every face, are cleverly arranged permanent magnets that allow any two cubes to attach to each other.<br /><br />"It's one of these things that the [modular-robotics] community has been trying to do for a long time," said Daniela Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).<br /><br />"We just needed a creative insight and somebody who was passionate enough to keep coming at it - despite being discouraged," Rus said.<br /><br />As with any modular-robot system, the hope is that the modules can be miniaturised: the ultimate aim of most such research is hordes of swarming microbots that can self-assemble, like the "liquid steel" androids in the movie 'Terminator II.'<br />MIT researchers are now building an army of 100 cubes, each of which can move in any direction, and designing algorithms to guide them.<br /><br />"We want hundreds of cubes, scattered randomly across the floor, to be able to identify each other, coalesce, and autonomously transform into a chair, or a ladder, or a desk, on demand," said John Romanishin, a research scientist in CSAIL, who first proposed the new design for modular robots.</p>
<p>Scientists have developed new Terminator-style cube-shaped robots that can leap through the air, jump on top of each other and assemble together to form arbitrary shapes.<br /><br /></p>.<p>A more refined version of the robots could temporarily repair bridges or buildings during emergencies, or assemble into different types of furniture or heavy equipment as needed, researchers believe.<br /><br />Developed by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the robots, known as M-Blocks, are cubes with no external moving parts.<br /><br />They are able to climb over and around one another, leap through the air, roll across the ground, and even move while suspended upside down from metallic surfaces, researchers said.<br /><br />Inside each robot is a flywheel that can reach speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute; when the flywheel is braked, it imparts its angular momentum to the cube.<br /><br />On each edge of an M-Block, and on every face, are cleverly arranged permanent magnets that allow any two cubes to attach to each other.<br /><br />"It's one of these things that the [modular-robotics] community has been trying to do for a long time," said Daniela Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).<br /><br />"We just needed a creative insight and somebody who was passionate enough to keep coming at it - despite being discouraged," Rus said.<br /><br />As with any modular-robot system, the hope is that the modules can be miniaturised: the ultimate aim of most such research is hordes of swarming microbots that can self-assemble, like the "liquid steel" androids in the movie 'Terminator II.'<br />MIT researchers are now building an army of 100 cubes, each of which can move in any direction, and designing algorithms to guide them.<br /><br />"We want hundreds of cubes, scattered randomly across the floor, to be able to identify each other, coalesce, and autonomously transform into a chair, or a ladder, or a desk, on demand," said John Romanishin, a research scientist in CSAIL, who first proposed the new design for modular robots.</p>