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| Fractal robotic cube |
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 ?
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| A fractal design |
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| Fractal design of electronic circuit of tactical helmet |
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 video below
shows a two cube structure of fractal robots.
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 adinfinitum. 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
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| Construction |
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 clays which are environmentally friendlier and more readily
available in developing nations.
The robotic cubes are assembled
from face plates which have been manufactured and bolted to a cubic frame as
illustrated in figure 1.
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.
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.
A
3D rendered image of what the robotic cube looks like in practice is shown in
figure 3.
Figure 3
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.
Figure 4
The
petals are pushed in and out of the slots with the aid of a motor. Each petal
could be directly driven by single motor or they could be driven as a pair with
the aid of a flexible strip of metal.
The petals have serrated edges and they engage into the neighboring robotic cube through the 45 degree slots.The serrated edges of the petals are engaged by either a gear wheel or a large screw thread running the length of the slot which slides the cubes along.
Implementation of computer control
The largest component of the Fractal
Robot system is the software. Because shape changing robots are fractals,
everything around the robot such as tooling, operating system, software etc
must be fractally organized inorder to take advantage of the fractal operation.
Fractal Robot hardware is designed to integrate as seamlessly with software data
structures as possible. So, it is essential that unifying Fractal architecture
is followed to the letter for compatibility and interoperability. Fractal architecture
dominates the functions of the core of the O.S, the data structures, the
implementation of the devices etc. Everything that is available to the O.S is
containerized into fractal data structures that permit possible compatibility
and conversion issues possible.
Fractal O.S
The Fractal O. S plays a crucial role in making the integration of the system seamless and feasible. A Fractal O. S uses a no: of features to achieve these goals.
1. Transparent data communication
2. Data compression at all levels
3. Awareness of built in self repair.
A Fractal O. S coverts fractally written code into machine commands for movement. The data signals are fed to a bus (fractal bus). The e3lectronics have to be kept simple so that they can be miniaturized. Towards this end, the Fractal Robot uses principally state logic.
So its internal design consists if ROM, RAM and some
counters.
Fractal Bus
This is an important and pioneering advancement for fractal computer technology. A Fractal bus permits Hardware and software to merge seamlessly into one unified data structure. It helps in sending and receiving fractally controlled data.
MOVEMENT ALGORITHMS
There are many mechanical designs for constructing cubes, and cubes come in different sizes, but the actual movement method is always the same.
Regardless of complexity, the cubes move only between integer positions and only obey commands to move left, right, up, down, forward and backward. If it can't perform an operation, it simply reverses back. If it can't do that as well, the software initiates self repair algorithms.
There are only three basic movement methods.
· Pick and place
· N-streamers
· L-streamers
Pick
and place is easy to understand. Commands are issued to a collection of cubes
telling each cube where to go. A command of "cube 517 move left by 2
positions" results in only one cube moving in the entire machine. Entire
collection of movements needed to perform particular operations are worked out
and stored exactly like conventional robots store movement paths. (Paint
spraying robots use this technique.)
However
there are better structured ways to storing movement patterns. It turns out
that all movements other than pick and place are variations of just two basic
schemes called the N-streamer and L-streamer.
N-streamer
is easy to understand. A rod is pushed out from a surface, and then another
cube is moved into the vacant position. The new cube is joined to the tail of
the growing rod and pushed out again to grow the rod. The purpose of the rod is
to grow a 'tentacle'. Once a tentacle is grown, other robots can be directed to
it and move on top of it to reach the other side. For bridge building
applications, the tentacles are grown vertically to make tall posts.
L-streamer
is a little more involved to explain and requires the aid of figure 5.
L-streamers are also tentacles but grown using a different algorithm.
Figure 5
Basically,
an L-shape of cubes numbered 4, 5, 6 in figure 2a attached to a rod numbered 1,
2, 3, and then a new cube 7 is added so that the rod grows by one cube until it
looks like figure 2f. The steps illustrated in figure 2b to 2e can be repeated
to grow the tentacle to any length required. When large numbers of cubes follow
similar paths, common cubes are grouped into a collection and this collection
is controlled with same single commands (left, right, up, down, forward and
backward) as if they were a single cube as illustrated in figure 6.
Figure 6
By
grouping cubes and moving them, any structure can be programmed in and
synthesized within minutes. Once the pattern is stored in a computer, that
pattern can be replayed on command over and over again. The effect is somewhat
similar to digitally controlled putty which is as flexible as computer
software. Digitally Controlled Matter Is The Hardware Equivalent Of Computer
Software.
Tools
mounted inside cubes are moved with similar commands. The commands to operate
the tool are stored alongside the cube movement instructions making the system
a very powerful programmable machine.
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