Robot Metabolism

Last featured in Bloomberg Originals’ Posthuman—Robots: The Aliens We Made

Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or incorporate material from their environments. A key challenge to such physical adaptation has been that while robot minds are rapidly evolving new behaviors through AI, their bodies remain closed systems, unable to systematically integrate new material to grow or heal. I believe that the key to open-ended physical adaptation for robots is using a small repertoire of simple modules. This allows machines to adapt mechanically by consuming parts from other machines or their surroundings and shedding broken components. In my paper recent paper, “Robot Metabolism: Towards machines that can grow by consuming other machines,” my team and I demonstrate this principle using my custom Truss Link* robot platform composed of one-dimensional actuated bars. We show how, in this way, robots can grow bigger, faster, and more capable by consuming materials from their environment and from other robots. We suggest that machine metabolic processes akin to the one demonstrated here will be an essential part of any sustained future robot ecology.

*Truss Links were formerly referred to as Robot Links.

P. M. Wyder et al., “Robot Metabolism: Towards machines that can grow by consuming other machines,” 2024, doi: arXiv:2411.11192 [cs.RO]

P. M. Wyder et al., "Robot Links: Towards Self-Assembling Truss Robots," 2024 6th International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR), Chicago, IL, USA, 2024, pp. 525-531, doi: 10.1109/ReMAR61031.2024.10619984.

Particle Robotics

Stochastic and distributed amorphous robots

A soft robot comprised of rigid components

We introduce a new soft robotics concept that employs multiple rudimentary components: particles form amorphous bodies capable of controlled motion. Each particle has a single modifiable degree of freedom: its vibration speed. Multiple particles constrained by a passive, inelastic membrane form soft robots composed of rigid parts (see photo). When half of the particles inside the membrane vibrate faster than the other half, the robot moves. The particles bump into each other inside the membrane, causing directional motion.

We analyze how frequency modulation and particle count affects locomotion direction and magnitude. Environment-responsive particle motion modulation enables decentralized control. In other words, each particle adjusts its vibration speed in response to its distance from a light source, so the robot can move towards or away from the light. Without communicating with each other, the particles achieve coordinated motion. In future research, we will study system resilience and adaptiveness, including deactivated (dead) particles and obstacle navigation. Particle robots offer an alternative soft robotics method by achieving flexibility from rigid components.

R. Batra and P.M. Wyder et al., "Vibrating Particle Robot," 2024 6th International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR), Chicago, IL, USA, 2024, pp. 100-106, doi: 10.1109/ReMAR61031.2024.10619983.