Reading the
news today, you may come across the creation of the first type of transforming robots on behalf of a team of Harvard scientists - alas, not yet close to the type we're used to, but it's a big step forward in robotics and manufacturing industries nonetheless! Check out below a selection from the press release at
EurekAlert!, a
video about the robots, and read an article about it
here.
Origami robot folds itself up, crawls away
Prototype made almost entirely of printable parts demonstrates crucial capabilities of reconfigurable robots
For years, a team of researchers at MIT and Harvard University has been working on origami robots — reconfigurable robots that would be able to fold themselves into arbitrary shapes.
In the August 7 issue of Science, they report their latest milestone: a robot, made almost entirely from parts produced by a laser cutter, that folds itself up and crawls away as soon as batteries are attached to it.
"The exciting thing here is that you create this device that has computation embedded in the flat, printed version," says Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and one of the Science paper's co-authors. "And when these devices lift up from the ground into the third dimension, they do it in a thoughtful way."