MIT Robotics develop the software for controlling smart sand on smart pebble prototypes

At the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May — the world’s premier robotics conference — DRL researchers will present a paper describing algorithms that could enable such “smart sand.” They also describe experiments in which they tested the algorithms on somewhat larger particles — cubes about 10 millimeters to an edge, with rudimentary microprocessors inside and very unusual magnets on four of their sides.

Unlike many other approaches to reconfigurable robots, smart sand uses a subtractive method, akin to stone carving, rather than an additive method, akin to snapping LEGO blocks together. A heap of smart sand would be analogous to the rough block of stone that a sculptor begins with. The individual grains would pass messages back and forth and selectively attach to each other to form a three-dimensional object; the grains not necessary to build that object would simply fall away. When the object had served its purpose, it would be returned to the heap. Its constituent grains would detach from each other, becoming free to participate in the formation of a new shape.

To test their algorithm, the researchers designed and built a system of ‘smart pebbles’ — cubes about 10 millimeters to an edge, with processors and magnets built in. Photo: M. Scott Brauer

Nextbigfuture has covered the Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Claytronic project and the 1 millimeter diameter claytronic robots that they had in 2008 and continued work in 2010

Carnegie Mellon and Intel had a roadmap to getting to 10 micron on a side Claytronic catoms

The cubes — or “smart pebbles” — that Gilpin and Rus built to test their algorithm enact the simplified, two-dimensional version of the system. Four faces of each cube are studded with so-called electropermanent magnets, materials that can be magnetized or demagnetized with a single electric pulse. Unlike permanent magnets, they can be turned on and off; unlike electromagnets, they don’t require a constant current to maintain their magnetism. The pebbles use the magnets not only to connect to each other but also to communicate and to share power. Each pebble also has a tiny microprocessor, which can store just 32 kilobytes of program code and has only two kilobytes of working memory.

The pebbles have magnets on only four faces, Gilpin explains, because, with the addition of the microprocessor and circuitry to regulate power, “there just wasn’t room for two more magnets.” But Gilpin and Rus performed computer simulations showing that their algorithm would work with a three-dimensional block of cubes, too, by treating each layer of the block as its own two-dimensional grid. The cubes discarded from the final shape would simply disconnect from the cubes above and below them as well as those next to them.

True smart sand, of course, would require grains much smaller than 10-millimeter cubes. But according to Robert Wood, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Harvard University, that’s not an insurmountable obstacle. “Take the core functionalities of their pebbles,” says Wood, who directs Harvard’s Microrobotics Laboratory. “They have the ability to latch onto their neighbors; they have the ability to talk to their neighbors; they have the ability to do some computation. Those are all things that are certainly feasible to think about doing in smaller packages.”

Intel and Micron scale Claytronics

Intel CTO Rattner in 2008 believed that digital multi radios would enable shrinking claytronics to the micron scale

A 2012 talk from Seth Copen Goldstein of Carnegie Mellon. Scalable distributed computing with distributed intelligent MEMS

MEMS research has until recently focused mainly on the engineering process, resulting in interesting products and a growing market. To fully realize the promise of MEMS, the next step is to add embedded intelligence. With embedded intelligence, the scalability of manufacturing will enable distributed MEMS systems consisting of thousands or millions of units which can work together to achieve a common goal. However, before such systems can become a reality, we must come to grips with the challenge of scalability which will require paradigm-shifts both in hardware and software. Furthermore, the need for coordinated actuation, programming, communication and mobility management raises new challenges in both control and programming. Programming such scalable systems is only achievable through distributed paradigm. The objective of this talk is to report the progresses made by taking the example of two research projects and by giving the remaining challenges and the perspectives of distributed intelligent MEMS with an highlight on distributed programming of these systems.

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