Abstract
Investigators publish new report on robotics. According to news reporting from Chicago, Illinois, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "Designing robotic systems that can change their physical form factor as well as their compliance to adapt to environmental constraints remains a major conceptual and technical challenge." The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from University of Chicago: "To address this, we introduce the Granulobot, a modular system that blurs the distinction between soft, modular, and swarm robotics. The system consists of gear-like units that each contain a single actuator such that units can self-assemble into larger, granular aggregates using magnetic coupling. These aggregates can reconfigure dynamically and also split into subsystems that might later recombine. Aggregates can self-organize into collective states with solid- and liquid-like properties, thus displaying widely differing compliance. These states can be perturbed locally via actuators or externally via mechanical feedback from the environment to produce adaptive shape-shifting in a decentralized manner. This, in turn, can generate locomotion strategies adapted to different conditions."
NETL
NSTL