Self-configuring mechanical system example

1. Self-configuring mechanical system example • Vision: Set of “atomic” building blocks, each with a little bit of computing, sensing, and communication (and possibly actuation) • Three steps: • Immediate: Smart building materials • Two years out: Reconfiguring electromechanical systems • Ten years out: Vat of self-assembling parts

2. First step: Smart building materials • Prototype: building block is a Lego etc; they collaborate to decide how to be a bunker, a bridge, etc, and they tell the untrained builder where and when to put them down • Visionary application: after an earthquake the surviving slabs collaborate to understand what’s supporting what, what’s unstable, etc; and give advice to untrained rescue workers. (Maybe they also sense and communicate with victims.)

3. Second step: Reconfiguring electromechanical systems • Prototype: Building block is a module of a modular robotic system; they collaborate to produce desired behaviors like locomotion and transportation. • Visionary application: building blocks are individual components of complex mechanical systems (fuel injector, solenoid, etc); each has a little sense+comp+comm and they collaborate to monitor and describe the health of the whole system (automobile, etc) to its user. Thus, systemwide health monitoring and repair is an automatic consequence of the capabilities of the individual components.

4. Third step: Vat of self-assembling parts • Command it to grow a wound dressing, a smart desk, a truck, ... • Could also be used for repair or reconfiguration • What are the building blocks? • Each one has some computational capability (and comm, sense, etc…) • Analogy (1970): computers and wires => arpanet • Future: carbon, silicon, chemical; power supplies, bacteria, wireless comm; • Robot factory • Farther future: nanotech? Carbon atoms etc. • How do you program the system? • The parts collaborate amorphously to form the needed interactions • The specification for the desired global behavior comes from outside: • near term: detailed external spec of physical assembly sequence • med term: external spec describes only desired outcome, not procedure • far term: self-assembly from “seeds” • Existing work: • Early 90s, UCB fluidic self assembly for arrays of lasers (but no computation or programming)