Gizmodo
University of Pennsylvania roboticists—who talk like robot versions of Alan Alda—have developed modular artificial creatures capable of recomposing themselves in case they are destroyed—effectively taking the first step toward global annihilation, thank you very much. Happily for Humanity, they are far from T1000, and closer to Jerry Lewis, as the (quite funny, yet sad) end of the video shows.
Composed of 15 modules arranged in groups of five, each of CKbot's clusters has a module with a 20fps camera, a blinking LED, and an accelerometer to reconstruct the entire robot, using magnets. The other 12 modules have an embedded computer, proximity sensors, and a servo motor that allows a rotational range of about 180 degrees.
When the main mini-Voltron-wannabe gets destroyed and the clusters are disconnected, they self-right up themselves detecting its orientation according to gravity (don't keep looking like an idiot and start running now). Once they are on position, the cameras search for the unique LED patterns, and then two closers start to approach each other at glacial speeds (by this time, you should have reached the weapons storage and grab a shotgun, five machine guns, and a grenade launcher). When the two first modules connect, they start searching for the third one (you may fire now) until they finally assemble again, forming a single entity that would inevitably destroy you if we hadn't told you the steps above.
Yes, somewhere in the future, this advice will save your life. Print it out. [New Scientist Tech]
Comments
Here is an idea, Why dont we make robots that dont fall apart. That way they wont need to put themselves back together.
The last 10 seconds are wort sticking around for.
If only my spelling would re-assemble itself. WORTH sticking around for.
A robot that gathers its parts and reassembles iteself. They took this idea from one of my favorite movies - The Iron Giant.
I was both truly impressed and a bit creeped out...until those last few dorky seconds of the video. (You can hear the filmmaker laugh too.)
@Curves: LOVE The Iron Giant!
Gonna have to assume the kid you're talking about wasn't John Connor, but his annoying red-haired sidekick...
This is a pretty awesome concept, imagine kicking it apart in your living room, coming back in the morning and finding it back together. A few days of that and you may well go mad.
If they can make the modules smaller and faster this could have some amazing uses.
Apparently it's task once reassembled is to walk a few steps and fall down.
A pyramidal single unit design with higher intelligence would lead to some serious self replicating robot happenings.
I wasn't thinking T1000 - so much as Replicators from various Sci-Fi series_
We should kill all of the idiots creating this crap Now !! And destroy their research and make laws to ban any future research_ This is the crap from Sci-Fi we should not be trying to recreate_ Thanks a lot James Cameron_
Artificial Intelligence
Robotic Replicator Technology
Robotic Reassemly Technology
@Curves: Another masterpiece that Brad Bird retells. Love it.
@NoStyle: Did you not notice how others chose not to spoil the joke?
they should integrate this technology with legos, t'would be much fun to destroy for legorado only to have it repair itself lol.
I love the ending. All that jargon, and it ends with a laugh and a sigh.
Hmm. I wonder how long it will take for them to put this on MEMS?
@dedalus987: It's all fun and games until one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gets his kid a legobot. Then, one day, a lego version of him comes into work... and NOBODY notices.
Oh noes, Stargate Replicators!
Destroy them now, before they kill us all!
@Klappstuhl: Sokay they'll be more interested in aliens that are protecting their rear ends because they have better technology.
@CatPope: LOL yeah I love how it just falls over like a plastered drunk and just breaks apart. Then the laughs and sighs... priceless.
@CatPope: or until one of the engineers' mom walks through the kitchen and accidentally kicks apart the robot.
"Lester!! I thought I told you to pick up your robots when you're done with them!!!"
It's the rare video that can pull an LOL out of me at work, but those last few seconds did it. Now I'm off to accomplish something quickly and email my boss about it...
It reminds me of my drunk uncle...
I suppose that you have to crawl before you Voltron....
@TonyTriple: Indeed! It's a pretty sweet time to be alive, don't you think? I sure do, but killing groups of these things is going to be DIFFICULT!
@SuperCollider:
I hear it's possible to destroy robots with a simple logical paradox.
[www.truveo.com]
Now, if Rothman used his Casio EX-F1 on T1000, what we woud've seen was millions of tiny robots like these reassembling...
I think if they used Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Nitrogen atoms for each simplest module, then this will very much resemble a protein synthesis or some other complex, microscobic, life-related thingy :P
in the future we are going to look back on this video and laugh
Very creepy and awesome.
@Crake: A few days of that and it may well go mad. I was waiting for it to take revenge at the end, until it fell over and fell apart and we started laughing.
Wait... Isn't that laughing just going to piss it off more, kinda like the kid that gets bullied all the time and becomes a serial killer?
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