Stack 'em Up!
(image: projects.csail.mit.edu)
Over the years, robotics has come a long way, researchers finding more clever ways to manipulate the physical structures and locomotive skills of AI constructions.
But this was probably the most entertaining I've seen.
Developed by John Romanishin, a research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and other colleagues, the M-Block was created.
(image: singularityhub.com)
Each M-Block moves due to an internal flywheel, that can turn at up to 20,000 revolutions per minute. Once the flywheel stops in a pre-programmed direction, the momentum of the shift moves the block in that direction. It's really cool and so much fun to watch!
The M-Block’s exterior is made of magnets, eight on each side of the cube, and a cylindrical magnet on each edge. The magnets help the blocks stick to each other, therefore, helping the blocks 'climb' other blocks.
(image: img.mit.edu)
The team hopes that, in the future, smaller versions of the blocks that would work together so that, to the naked eye, the collection of miniature blocks would look like liquid steel. But, until then, the team is working on building more M-Blocks so that they can explore the possibilities of how the current version of the robots can be used.