How would you like to have your very own shape-shifter? Perhaps a liquid metal T-1000 Terminator to help around the house. Or a universal tool kit that could reshape itself into any implement at the press of a button. For an astronaut in orbit, an army mechanic in remote terrain or even a homeowner trying to fix a furnace on a cold winter night, it could be just the thing.
Well, one day maybe. The traditional approach to building shape-shifting devices has been to use materials based on shape memory alloys, polymer sheets or nanoparticles. But these have proved difficult to control and have other limitations, so researchers have begun taking a different and less exotic tack.
Their approach is known as self-reconfigurable robotics, and it takes advantage of recent advances in robot hardware, communications and control
See a video of the modular robots reassembling when kicked apart...
Article written by Jeff Hecht of NewScientist.com. To view the original post, click here.
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Geeeeez, it was like watching "Cell" of Dragon Ball Z reassembling himself after being hit by Gokou's Kamehame Wave. I know that in Hollywood movies, there were lots of shape shifters or characters who can reassemble themselves after being hit and smashed . There were Mystique of X-men and Sandman of Fantastic Four but I never thought that some group of people are already using the concept to develop robots which has the same capability. The modular robots in the video just looks like junk pieces bricks trying to put back its missing pieces... but wait till they apply the technology and the concept they used in making Androids. A little scary, though.
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