The birth of
every technology is the result of the quest for automation of some form of
human work. This has led to many inventions that have made life easier for us.
Fractal Robot is a science that promises to revolutionize technology in a way
that has never been witnessed before.
The principle behind Fractal
Robots is very simple. You take some cubic bricks made of metals and plastics,
motorize them, put some electronics inside them and control them with a
computer and you get machines that can change shape from one object to another.
Almost immediately, you can now build a home in a matter of minutes if you had
enough bricks and instruct the bricks to shuffle around and make a house! It is
exactly like kids playing with Lego bricks and making a toy hose or a toy
bridge by snapping together Lego bricks-except now we are using computer and
all the work is done under total computer control. No manual intervention is
required. Fractal Robots are the hardware equivalent of computer software.
What are Fractals?
A fractal is anything which has a
substantial measure of exact or statistical self-similarity. Wherever you look
at any part of its body it will be similar to the whole object.
Fractal Robots
A Fractal Robot physically
resembles itself according to the definition above. The robot can be animated
around its joints in a uniform manner. Such robots can be straight forward
geometric patterns/images that look more like natural structures such as
plants. This patented product however has a cubic structure. The figure below
shows a collection of such cubes.
Fractal Robots start at
one size to which half size or double size cubes can be attached and to each of
these half size/double size cubes can be attached respectively. This is what
makes them fractal. So a fractal cube can be of any size. The smallest expected
size is between 1000 and 10,000 atoms wide. These cubes are embedded with
computer chips that control their movement. Thus they can be programmed to
configure themselves into any shape. The implication of this concept is very
powerful. This concept can be used to build buildings, bridges, instruments,
tools and almost anything else you can think of. It can be done with hardly any
manual intervention. These robots can assist in production and manufacture of
goods thus bringing down the manufacturing price down dramatically.
Fractal Robot Mechanism
Simple Construction details
Considerable
effort has been taken in making the robotic cubes as simple as possible after
the invention has been conceived. The design is such that it has fewest
possible moving parts so that they can be mass produced. Material requirements
have been made as flexible as possible so that they can be built from metals
and plastics which are cheaply available in industrialized nations but also
from ceramics and clay which are environmentally friendlier and more readily
available in developing nations.
The cube
therefore is hollow and the plates have all the mechanisms. Each of these face plates
have electrical contact pads that allow power and data signals to be routed
from one robotic cube to another. The plates also have 45 degree petals that
push out of the surface to engage the neighboring face that allows one robotic
cube to lock to its neighbor The contact pads could be on the plates
themselves or be mounted separately on a purpose built solenoid operated pad as
shown in figure 2.
The
contact pads are arranged symmetrically around four edges to allow for
rotational symmetry. These contacts are relayed out and only transmit power
when required to do so. If they are operating submerged, the contact pads can
be forced into contact under pressure because of the petals, removing most of
the fluid between the gaps before transmitting power through them.
The
contact pads are not shown in figure 4. What is shown are four v shaped grooves
running the length of the plate that allow the petals to operate so that the
cubes can lock to each other and also each other using its internal mechanisms.
The
cubes have inductive coupling to transmit power and data signals. This means
that there care no connectors on the surface of the robotic cube. If the
connectors are used, wiring problems may follow. Unlike contact pads, inductive
coupling scale very well.
