A team of
engineers used little more than paper and Shrinky dinks™ to build a robot that
assembles itself into a complex shape in four minutes flat, and crawls away
without any human intervention. The advance, described in Science, demonstrates
the potential to quickly and cheaply build sophisticated machines that interact
with the environment, and to automate much of the design and assembly process.
The method draws inspiration from self-assembly in nature, such as the way
linear sequences of amino acids fold into complex proteins with sophisticated
functions.
In addition to
expanding the scope of ways one can manufacture robots in general, the advance
harbors potential for rather exotic applications as well. The robots are the
culmination of a series of advances made by the team over the last few years,
including development of a printed robotic inchworm (which still required human
involvement while folding itself) and a self-folding lamp that had to be turned
on by a person after it self-assembled. The new robot is the first that builds
itself and performs a function without human intervention.
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