Robotic magnetic bbastão “Truss link”: the robot who learned to take care of himself
While your intelligence increases at a frightening speed, robots remain attached to imperfect bodies and dependent on humans. Who will take care of them?
Engineers at Columbia University, funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (), developed a “robotic metabolism”That gives robots the unusual ability to consume other robots and use their components to cure, grow and improve.
Was presented in an article published last week in Science Advances.
According to the study’s authors, the ability of robots to maintain and potentially improve their physical components and capabilities, while artificial intelligence systems are already expanding their own autonomous capacities, it is a necessary step towards “self -sustainable robotic ecologies“.
“True autonomy means that robots should not only think for themselves, but also to support themselves physically,” he explained Philippe Martin Wyderresearcher in Columbia Engineering and the University of Washington and the main author of the study, in Da Columbia Engineering.
“Just as biological life absorbs and integrates resources, these robots grow, adapt and notice themselves using materials from their environment or other robots,” the researcher adds.
Unlike biological organismsrobots lack the ability to change, repair or improve your physical state without external assistance.
Columbia researchers say this lack of autonomy has made robots modern “Prisoners”, since their physical forms are typically closed systems, “that They cannot grow or self-repose, nor adapt to your environment. ”
The problem is still aggravated by the significant increased intelligence robotics that has been recorded in recent decades, which leaves the physical abilities of robots each time delayed.
“Robotic minds have advanced to jumps in the last decade through automatic learning, But robotic bodies remain monolithicinaidable and non -recyclable, ”he explained Lipson throwDirector of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University, and co -author of the study.
“Biological bodies, in contrast, are about adaptation-life forms can grow, heal and adapt,” adds Lipson.
According to the researcher, this biological adaptability derives from the fact that “modular” biological organisms can “Use and reuse” Components of other biological systems, such as amino acids. Ideally, the researcher says we will have to give robots the same abilities, which considers a nascent form of ‘mechanical metabolism’.
Thanks to the financing of Darpa and National Science Foundation (NSF), Wyder and colleagues found a way to change this situationstarting with a robotic magnetic stick called “Truss Link“Explains the.
Inspired by the toy, the investigators describe a Truss Link as a “simple bar -shaped module equipped with magnetic connectors freely that can expand, contract and connect with other modules at various angles. ”
This versatility and set of capabilities allow Truss to link to form increasingly complex physical structures.
In a series of laboratory experiences, the team demonstrated how these connections could self-skewed in two-dimensional forms. The team also showed how these two -dimensional forms could “Turning” into three-dimensional robots functional.
In the next phase, demonstrating robotic metabolism, the robots of the team further improved their abilities and functionality integrating new components into your design.
In an example of these robots “grow up” for more capable machines without external interference, one of the team’s three -dimensional robots of the team “Integrated” an additional connection that used as a cane.
According to the investigators, This simple car increased the speed robot descendant in more than 66.5%.
Lipson admits that idea of robots capable of adaptingimprove, grow and even self-produce “evokes some bad science fiction scenarios“.
However, the director of, where the work was conducted, emphasizes that Keep robots dependent on humans, even for simple maintenance, will become increasingly impractical – As the number of robotic systems we find and with which we interact in our daily lives should grow.
“The reality is that as we increasingly give our lives to robots – From cars without driver to industry automationand even space defense and exploitation, Who will take care of these robots? ”Asked Philippe Martin Wyder.
“We cannot trust humans to maintain these machines. Robots must ultimately Learn to take care of themselves“, Concludes the investigator.
