Robots as Transformers

Remember as a kid how you could take a robot and with a few twist and changes make the robot into something else? The robot wasn't actually a robot and while it didn't move by itself, you had a pretty good idea of how, if you had the technology, that robot could move. A little imagination and your play robot was the real thing. Then, if you had a little sadistic bent to yourself, you could pull off a limb of your robot. Now, could you imagine how to make this deformed robot move? I bet you could.

Fast forward to the present and meet Victor Zykov from Cornell University. He and he colleagues have built a robot that, when it loses a limb, is able to visualize itself (not as seen by a child playing with the robot) and determine how to move with the limbs it has left.

So, this robot can remake itself in terms of mobility when it's damaged.

Read the article, it's fascinating and is a leap forward in robotics.