Cellular shape shifting tangible systems
- Utility fog (microscale bots with nanoscale atomic precision)
- Claytronics (mesoscale and smaller)
There are some ongoing simulations and swarm-bot experiments with current day macro technology
in which we gain some preliminary experience.
Contents
Delineation to productive nanosystems
Cellular shape shifting tangible systems …
- are one class of possible products of advanced productive nanosystems like (nanofactories)
- are not productive nanosystems themselves. They are rather adaptive microsystems.
- are not concerned with the pre-production of their constituent parts. They do not make things from raw atoms themselves.
Far term goal productive nanosystems will not consist out of swarming nanobots.
The molecular assembler concept was an early simple bio-analogy that is now considered obsolete.
Higher throughput of smaller machinery favors production in very small volume.
A thin chip easy to cool due to high surface to volume ratio is self suggesting.
Hallmarks of Cellular shape shifting tangible systems
Hallmark of these Cellular shape shifting tangible systems:
Shape shifting:
They can change the whole of their structure by their actuators without needing to do any pick and place on active structures.
Cellular:
They are composed of many near identical units (homogeneous) and they lack specialized subsystems.
Or rather the specialized subsystems come as pre-build as monolithic-unit vitamins …
- from a lower assembly level (nanoscale) or
- from a different manual assembly or off-site industrial manufacturing process (macroscale)
Intermediates to other (non-productive) modular robotic systems
Brachiating gridcrawlers (macroscale and both smaller and bigger)
These are cellular but not shape-shifting.
There are some attempts of the Center for Bits and Atoms to make the robots in
brachiating gridcrawlers non-monolithic but be themselves made from the grid they are producing.
Assembling robots being assembled themselves would make the system less cellular.
Delineation to other (non-productive) modular robotic systems
For productive robotic systems that are …
- neither homogeneously cellular
- nor shape-shifting see:
RepRec pick-and-place robots (GemGum)
External links
- Wikipedia Self-reconfiguring modular robot (contains a good overview over current experimental macroscopic systems)
Related
- Robot substructure gradients
- Simultaneous prototyping across scales
- Digital control over matter & machine phase
