Project Smart Sand: Sand man within reach of robot

We have already had to deal with spam servers, sports coaches and even robots that manufacture other, but robots that have the ability to replicate forms, remains an unexplored area.

This project called Smart Sand (for sand intelligent) has the ultimate objective of enabling the design of mini-robots as big as grains of sand. These robots will interact with each other from information, stick to each other physically responds intelligently to a given shape.

The idea comes from the imagination of an MIT team led by Professor Daniela Rus. For now, researchers are not yet succeeded because they could not realize that the cubic modules with a side of 12mm. He will have to wait before these robots are miniaturized to 1/12th of their volumes.

In the immediate future these smart cubes of sand can cover an existing object and replicate its form, when they become grains of sand, they marry in structure to the nearest millimeter. To hell with 3D printing!