Fractal Robots : Applications

APPLICATIONS OF FRACTAL ROBOTS

1. Bridge building

Figure 12

One of the biggest problems in civil engineering is to get enough bridges built as rapidly as possible for mass transit and rapid development of an economy. Shape changing robots are ideal for making all manners of bridges from small to the very largest. The bridging technology introduced here can be used to patch up earthquake damaged bridges, and they can also be used as a means for the shape changing robot to cross very rough terrain. To grow a suspension bridge, the shape changing robot grows a bridge by extending a rod and it feeds the rod using the L-shape streamer from underneath the rod. The bridge assembly machine is built principally from simple mass manufactured repeating cubes that move under computer control, and reshape into different scaffolds in a matter of seconds

2. Fire fighting

        Fire fighting robots need to enter a building through entrances that may be very small. The machines themselves may be very large and yet they must get through and once inside, they may have to support the building from collapse.

        To a great extent fire fighting is an art and not completely reliant technology. You need men and machine to salvage the best out of the worst possible situations and often application of a little common sense is far better than sending in the big machines.But equally there are times where only machines with capabilities far beyond what we have today are capable of rescuing a particular situation. The application of shape changing robots is about those situations.

3. Entering Buildings

        Shape changing robots can enter a building through entrances that are as small as 4 cubes. Figure 1 below shows what a robot can do to enter a room through a duct. These shape changing robots could be carrying a fire hose in which case on entering they can apply the hose immediately.

Figure 13

        Medical technology in the future may be applied on the spot to victims of fire using shape changing robots that are completely integrated into the robot in a machine that is fundamentally identical to the robot - only fractally smaller.

        Only a shape changing robot with fractal fingers and fractal tools can sift through the rubble without disturbing it further to search for survivors and bring them out alive. Using convetional methods, you always run the risk of trampling over someone with your equipment or loosening something that leads to further disturbance.

4. Defense technology

The use of new technology of fractal shape changing 

robots in defense applications is going to completely change the way warfare is conducted in the next millennium.

        The machines even at the slow speeds shown in animated figure above can dodge incoming shells at 2 km distance by opening a hole in any direction. While most tanks and aircraft need to keep a 4 km distance from each other to avoid being hit, this machine can avoid being hit and return fire inside 2 km, while carrying a formidable array of fractal weapons integrated into a true multi-terrain vehicle, making them totally lethal to any passing war fighters, aircraft, tanks, and armoured personnel carriers; surviving shelling, rockets and missiles. As the technology moves on to hydraulic & pneumatic technology, shell avoidance is feasible at practically point blank range.

        Nothing survives on extended warranties in a battlefield. 

With self repair, these immortal machines are no match for state of the art research directions in present day military robotic systems, which are mere toys in comparison.

5. Earth Quake Applications:

        

Once a building is damaged by earthquakes, the terrain inside (and outside) the building is completely undefined. You need true multi-terrain vehicles with walking abilities that can transform interchangeably into crawling machines to get past obstacles and reach the buildings and structures that need to be repaired. You need fire fighting robots to fight fires, you medical robots to look after the injured and you need that same machine to become the machines that will enter the buildings, erect support structures and prevent it from collapsing. Figure 15 and 16 below show how a very large shape changing robot can enter a building through a narrow window and rebuild itself one on the other side.

6. Medical Applications

        A fractal robot system with 1 mm cubes can squirt into the human body through a 2 mm pin hole and rebuild itself inside the body into surgical instruments and perform the operation without having to open up the patient

       A size 1 mm is just adequate for nearest point of entry into the site of injury from the surface to perform very complicated surgery to remove cancers, cysts, blood clots and stones. The machine reaches its objective from nearest geometric point of entry by threading itself past major blood vessels or pinching and severing them if they are not for negotiation. The smaller the machines the more readily it can be used to directly operate from the nearest entry point with the least amount of wounding to the patient.

        A machine like this could operate on shrapnel victims. As shrapnel is a fractal object, the wounding it causes is fractal in nature. Thus a fractal machine is needed to deal with a fractal wound. The faster the machines operate all around the body, the more likely the patient can survive the damage. In normal use, this machine must be able to drain bad blood and fluids, detect and remove all foreign objects that have entered the body, sew up minor wounds after cleaning and medicating them, sew together blood vessels and nerve bundles using microsurgery methods before sealing major wounds, move shattered bone fragments inside the body and hold them in position for a few days while it sets back, and when necessary, perform amputations that involves cutting through flesh and bone. This surgical robot as described is called a Fractal Surgeon.

 7. Space Exploration

        Space is probably one of the best application areas for fractal robots because of its cheapness, built in self repair and 100% automation possibilities.

     Space is extremely expensive and if things go wrong and there is nowhere to turn for help. Using fractal robots it is possible to build anything from space stations to satellite rescue vehicles without any human intervention.

Will be in near future......!!!!

Imaginary assembling unit of fractal robots for mass production

LIMITATIONS

• Technology is still in infancy

• Current cost is very high($1000 per cube for the 1^st generation of cubes, after which it will reduce to $100 or so).

• Needs very precise & flexible controlling software.