TinkerBots is a modular robotics building set with the aim of encouraging children to learn about electronics through play. The Berlin-based makers behind the project are seeking to raise $100,000 over the next 46 days via the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform to get their kits to market. Read More
In today’s toy-scape, robotic building sets
If the phrase ‘caveat emptor’ (aka buyer beware) applies to anything, it’s Kickstarter and other crowdfunded products. Wonderful things are promised by optimistic designers, inventors, and marketers, but rarely are they delivered
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Modular things are having a moment, even if Motorola’s plans for a modular smartphone look more pipe dream than practical reality. With modular robotics it’s a different story. Progress towards more sophisticated bot-making kits is being made steadily, block by block.
Just last month MIT created self-assembling modular bots, for instance. Today Modular Robotics, the Boulder, Colorado-based maker of the Cubelets robotics building blocks designed for kids and kidults, has kicked off a Kickstarter campaign for the next generation of its product, which it’s calling MOSS.
The main change with MOSS vs Cubelets is an evolved design for the blocks involving ball magnet connectors. What’s so great about ball magnets? They allow for joints between blocks to be more dynamic – to swing or hinge, for instance – and thus for the blocks to be configured into a greater variety of more kinetically dynamic bots.
The company has also increased the range of the modules on offer – to allow for a greater variety of bots to be built.
The MOSS blocks will use colour-coded connecting faces to help signpost how they need to be connected up for the blocks’ various functions to work.
Modules on offer include the likes of battery modules to power stuff; spin and wheel modules to add motion/movement; Bluetooth modules for data connectivity so you can pair the bot with a smartphone or computer and remote control it; and sensor modules for detecting light or movement. Snap the modules together in functional configurations and off you go.
Modular Robotics is seeking $100,000 from Kickstarter backers keen to be first to get their hands on MOSS and start building. The estimated shipping date for the construction kits is February next year.
It’s offering various kits to Kickstarter backers – starting at $59 for a simple starter kit that lets you build a light-sensing robot; or $99 for a kit to make a distance-sensing bot and build simple robots that can drive; up to $379 for an advanced kit that lets you build a Bluetooth-controlled car and more – or $949 for a “mega bundle” of two basic kits and two advanced builder kits so you have lots of pieces to play with.
With the goal of giving kids the ability to easily design and build their own robotic creations, a group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University came up with the idea for a series of technology-packed building blocks they called Cubelets that became complex robots when assembled. Those researchers went on to found a company called Modular Robotics to sell their creations, and they’re now back with the next generation version of those blocks called MOSS that introduce a novel steel sphere connection system that breathes even more life into everything you build.
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Looking at these reconfiguring robo-cubes, created by research scientists at MIT in the face of ongoing naysaying, it strikes me that the human race can’t be far off a huge achievement: building a physical version of Tetris that self assembles. From angular chaos, to robot-enabled order. That and giving future Dalek armies the ability to bound up stairs.
The M-Blocks, shown off in the above video, are reconfigurable, modular robots with no external moving parts. The cubes’ ability to move results from harnessing the momentum of an internal flywheel (which can hit speeds of 20,000 revolutions p/m) — allowing them to climb over one another, make jumps, spin and roll around. And do all that without the need for wheels or legs.
Magnets on the corners of the blocks are used for course correction and stability, so that one small leap results in an M-Block snapping tidily into place atop its fellow, rather than going rogue and skittering uselessly off the table — although they can apparently do that, too. Chamfered edges on the cubes enhance the strength of the magnetism as the cubes rotate over each other to take up their new positions.
Reconfigurable modular robots with no external moving parts have evidently been something of a Holy Grail in the modular-robotics community. “It’s one of these things that the community has been trying to do for a long time,” says Daniela Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of CSAIL, speaking to MIT news. “We just needed a creative insight and somebody who was passionate enough to keep coming at it — despite being discouraged.
“Our objective is to design self-assembling and self-reconfiguring robot systems. These are modular robots with the ability of changing their geometry according to task and this is exciting because a robot designed for a single task has a fixed architecture. And that robot will perform a single task well but it will perform poorly on a different task in a different environment,” she adds in the video.
Very long term, the goal of much modular robotics research is to be able to miniaturise modules to such an extent that swarms of self-assembling microbots (or even nanobots) can be created — capable of reconfiguring themselves into different forms, shapes and sizes, and changing their function accordingly. Albeit, that’s far-off sci-fi stuff.
In the shorter term, the researchers behind M-Blocks reckon there are still potential use-cases for their more substantially sized, reconfiguring robo-cubes. They note that large numbers of the blocks could be used to temporarily repair bridges or buildings during emergencies, for instance, or raise and reconfigure scaffolding, or assemble different types of furniture or heavy equipment. Different cubes could also carry different functions — such as a camera, lights or a battery pack — to augment overall function.
The researchers are currently building an army of 100 cubes, each with the ability to move in any direction, and designing algorithms to guide them — with the aim of having the cubes transform their state from being randomly scattered across the floor, to identifying each other, coming together and then autonomously transforming into various forms (chair, ladder, etc.) on demand.
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