Gizmodo: Self-Repairing

Shape-Shifting Robot Re-Assembles Itself, Will Chase Snotty Teens on Motorbikes One Day

Jesus Diaz — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:50:00 EDT

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]

Sewer Slime Can Fix Bridges and Form Your Clothing

Wilson Rothman — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:21:12 EDT

Imagine one day waking up, showering then coating yourself with a slime normally found in the sewers of England, which immediately takes the shape of your pants and shirt. It might sound like Spiderman 3—or just totally freakin' disgusting—but an industrial designer is taking the concept seriously, studying something called "biofilms" for use in self-repairing structures like bridges, buildings or textiles.

There is a catch though: "The National Institutes of Health estimate that biofilms account for more than 80 percent of microbial infections in the human body."

According to the Wired piece:

Biofilms...are three-dimensional colonies of bacteria that secrete a starchy covering that protects the tiny creatures from predators, UV radiation and antibiotics.

You wouldn't want your brand new T-shirt protecting a virulent strain of killer virus from your body's normal defenses, would you?

David Bramston, a industrial design lecturer at the UK's University of Lincoln, partnered with Ron Dixon, head of forensic and biomedical sciences at the same university, to study a particular slime that grows on pipes in the sewers of England. By studying the material—slag—where the slime grows, Bramston thinks he can figure out a way to grow it for industrial purposes.

The flipside is that, through this research, Bramston and Dixon will find ways of preventing the growth of slime as well, so that, in lieu of making you a more dapper dresser, your clothes won't go all Venom and end up trying to kill you. [Wired Science; Venom parody source image]

Self-Replicating, Repairing Robots

Travis Hudson — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 15:31:55 EDT

Engineers at Cornell University have designed this odd-looking machine that can rebuild itself and also could perform repairs on itself. This machine is simply a conceptial design for the time being, therefore the reason that it looks like oversized Legos. Check out the video, here, to see the beast in action.

Machine that can build copies of itself [Random Good Stuff]