Going to the beach to build sand castles will get a lot more interesting if MIT researchers achieve their goal of creating, what they call, ‘smart sand’. Professor Daniela Rus and student Kyle Gilpin (from the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at MIT) have designed special algorithms that would enable robotic-like sand to assemble themselves into various shapes and objects.
"Sand" cube (via MIT)
The sand starts of as a singular mass and then ‘sheds’, or loses the sand grains that aren’t needed to form the object its mimicking. The pair has designed a reference model of specialized sand particles to test the algorithms. The sand-cubes (not actually sand) the team designed are 10 millimeters on each side and contain a miniature micro-processor that processes the algorithmic commands. These commands are then sent to a series of electro-permanent magnets, housed inside the cube, that can attract or repulse each other based on the shape desired. After the shape or object has served its purpose, the sand particles would then detach from one another and fall back into the sand pile and wait for the next assembly.
This is where one major challenge arises. The computational power to create one shape is easy but being able to create an almost infinite amount of shapes is extremely difficult, in regards to the algorithmic programming and more importantly- space. Each cube houses only 4 magnets because of the area allotment inside also needs to account for the electronic circuitry and processor. This makes it easier for the sand to assemble themselves into 2D objects but a little more difficult for 3D shapes. However, future revisions will undoubtedly be smaller and able to assemble themselves into 3D objects with more ease as the miniaturization of electronics progresses over time. Make the "sand" bigger for the time being, MIT?
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