MIT team demonstrates fundamental robot building blocks

The group’s work was inspired by the fact that all the world's living things are built out of combinations of just 20 amino acids. Project leader Prof Neil Gershenfeld is aiming to mimic this by creating a kit of just 20 fundamental parts that he claims could ultimately be used to assemble all of the different technological products in the world

Gershenfeld’s team has previously shown that structures assembled from many small, identical subunits can have numerous mechanical properties. Next, they demonstrated that a combination of rigid and flexible part types can be used to create morphing airplane wings, a longstanding goal in aerospace engineering.

The latest work, which was presented at the International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS) in Helsinki, Finland, adds components for movement and logic.

At the heart of the technology is a set of five millimetre-scale components, all of which can be attached to each other by a standard connector. These parts include the previous rigid and flexible types, along with electromagnetic parts, a coil, and a magnet.