Watch: A sci-fi dream is coming true as scientists have finally designed shape-shifting robots
The little cube-shaped robot can put on different ‘outfits’ to walk, run, sail, and fly.
We’ve seen the Transformers films and watched in awe as the massive robots changed shapes. They may soon be reality.
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has designed a new shape-shifting robot that wears different origami exoskeletons, inspired by origami and butterflies. It doesn’t quite look like a Transformer, and is adorably small in size, but it could change how robots are envisioned.
As the video above shows, the cube-shaped robot dubbed Primer can put on various “outfits” made of origami-like flat sheets that fold into specific shapes and allow it to perform different tasks, like walking, rolling, sailing and gliding.
The exoskeletons are rectangular sheets made from a thermo-shrinking polymer film. When heated, they wrap themselves around the cube in a few minutes. The cube, meanwhile, is propelled by a controlled magnetic field and, like a Russian nesting doll, can wear several outfits at a time.
This new technology could lead to a whole new generation of compact, customised robots designed for a multitude of tasks.