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Transformers Come to Life in Outer Space

Transformers

Those Hasbro Japanese Transformers toys from 1984 are taking on a life of their own in outer space, thanks to researchers at MIT. They’re still in the experimental stage so you won’t see battling monster trucks shooting missiles at each other for quite a while. The things ElectroVoxels can accomplish in micro-gravity are just as fascinating as last century’s Saturday morning cartoons though.

Transformers in space

Micro-gravity environments make it possible for robots to do things that can’t be done here on Earth. Things like assemble themselves into complex structures and configurations.

Similar to the television “Transformers” of the 1980’s, ElectroVoxels are based on a standard cube design. They can be mass produced into wireless building blocks which self-assemble and detach as needed. With no moving parts.

Even large scale systems are easy to manufacture and maintain. Individual units are cubes approximately 60 millimeters on a side with magnets made from standard ferrite core wrapped with copper wire.

The brains of each transformers like bot is made of “tiny printed circuit boards” with all the electronics to “send current through the right electromagnet in the right direction.

As the toy and cartoon Transformers are fully reconfigurable from one shape to another, under autonomous control, so are the ElectroVoxels.” MIT put out a short video of the whole system at work.

The experiments were done in the temporary micro-gravity of a plane flying to high altitude then plunging nose down in free fall to simulate weightlessness. Only for a moment or two at a time though.

Transformers

Intelligent components

The scientific community is thrilled to have these transformers like robots to work with. They have challenges which can be tackled with such “a fully functional modular robotic system in orbit.

These “electromagnetically actuated pivoting cubes are simple to build, operate, and maintain, enabling a flexible, modular and reconfigurable system that can serve as an inspiration to design intelligent components of future exploration missions,” Dario Izzo, head of the Advanced Concepts Team at the ESA, explains.

One of the places where these Transformers type cubes could come in really handy is by teaming them up with the “Space Forgefactories already on the drawing board.

CEO Andrew Bacon wants to “begin manufacturing certain high-performance materials in autonomous factories on returnable satellites.” To do it, he uses off the shelf 6U cubesats.

Transformers

Those cubesats could be hooked together with the Transformers ElectroVoxels to begin producing all sorts of useful things which will be needed in space.

Andrew Bacon is already working on his project to make fiber optic cable so pure they “can transmit 100 times faster data than a silica one, and that means they are worth $6 million a kilogram.

What do you think?

Written by Staff Editor

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