2025-02-21 カリフォルニア大学サンタバーバラ校 (UCSB)
Photo Credit Brian Long/UCSB
Disk-shaped robots can act collectively to accomplish tasks such as lifting and manipulating objects, or supporting weight
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.ucsb.edu/2025/021769/how-get-robot-collective-act-smart-material
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads7942
強度と形状を時空間的に制御する物質様ロボット集合体 Material-like robotic collectives with spatiotemporal control of strength and shape
Matthew R. Devlin, Sangwoo Kim, Otger Campàs, and Elliot W. Hawkes
Science Published:20 Feb 2025
Editor’s summary
One vision for robotics is to design groups of simple robots that work together, for example, like a colony of ants that can move like a flowing fluid but can also form a solid structure such as a bridge for an unpassable span. Devlin et al. designed a robot collective that can switch between a “fluidizing” state and a solid state based on the rotational state of the robot. Drawing from embryonic morphogenesis, the authors identified three important components of the biological process, interunit force, polarization, and adhesion, and developed their robotic counterparts. These elements enable locally tunable mechanical properties that can be exploited to change the collective’s shape and strength. —Marc S. Lavine
Abstract
The vision of robotic materials—cohesive collectives of robotic units that can arrange into virtually any form with any physical properties—has long intrigued both science and fiction. Yet, this vision requires a fundamental physical challenge to be overcome: The collective must be strong, to support loads, yet flow, to take new forms. We achieve this in a material-like robotic collective by modulating the interunit tangential forces to control topological rearrangements of units within a tightly packed structure. This allows local control of rigidity transitions between solid and fluid-like states in the collective and enables spatiotemporal control of shape and strength. We demonstrate structure-forming and healing and show the collective supporting 700 newtons (500 times the weight of a robot) before “melting” under its own weight.
