Molecubes are a collection of
modular robots created by
Hod Lipson
Hod Lipson (born 1967) is an Israeli - American robotics engineer. He is the director of Columbia University's Creative Machines Lab. Lipson's work focuses on evolutionary robotics, design automation, rapid prototyping, artificial life, and creat ...
and
Victor Zykov
The name Victor or Viktor may refer to:
* Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname
Arts and entertainment
Film
* Victor (1951 film), ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film
* Victor (1993 film), ...
from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
. A molecube is made of two rotatable halves, one with the microprocessor which represents the intelligence behind the unit, and the other with a motor for rotating the joint. A group of the cubes can be connected into a variety of shapes.
A robot constructed entirely of molecubes would be able to repair itself using extra cubes, and to
create a copy of itself using the same number of cubes.
[Cornell News Service: "Simple but seminal: Cornell researchers build a robot that can reproduce"](_blank)
Archived
Physical self-reproduction of both a three- and a four-module robot was demonstrated.
[Zykov, V., Mytilinaios, E., Adams, B. & Lipson, H. "Self-reproducing machines". Nature 435, 163–164 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/435163a]
Subsequent open-source development, with support from
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
and
Festo
Festo is a German automation company based in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany. Festo produces and sells pneumatics, pneumatic and electrical control systems and drive technology for factories and Process automation system, process automation. Fe ...
[Festo: A programmable
robot system https://www.festo.com/rep/en_corp/assets/pdf/Molecubes_en.pdf]
reduced size and weight of the molecubes.
[V. Zykov, A. Chan, and H. Lipson, “Molecbues: An open-source modular robotic kit” in IROS-2007 Self-Reconfigurable Robotics Workshop, (2007). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.375.5814&rep=rep1&type=pdf]
Additional molecube types were produced including: hinges, grippers, batteries, wheels, cameras and more.
[Zykov, Victor, W. Phelps, Nicolas Lassabe, and Hod Lipson. "Molecubes extended: Diversifying capabilities of open-source modular robotics" In IROS-2008 Self-Reconfigurable Robotics Workshop, pp. 22-26. (2008). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.140.4555&rep=rep1&type=pdf]
See also
*
Self-reconfiguring modular robot
Modular self-reconfiguring robotic systems or self-reconfigurable modular robots are autonomous kinematic machines with variable morphology. Beyond conventional actuation, sensing and control typically found in fixed-morphology robots, self-reco ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
* Youtube video
Self-replicating blocks from Cornell University* Youtube video
Festo - Molecubes* Creative Machines Lab page
* GitHub repository
Molecubes - Blueprints, source code and circuit schematics* molecubes.org website
Detailed build materials and instructionsArchived
Modular design
Open-source robots
Multi-robot systems
Self-replicating machines