A new class of robots takes inspiration from build-your-own Lego bricks or Transformers , robots that can be assembled in many ways to work together to solve problems or carry out jobs that are too boring, dirty or dangerous for humans.
A team of researchers has now figured out how to make this class of modular robots work underwater . The idea is that they could be used for search and rescue missions, inspecting oil pipelines or helping scientists explore the ocean.
RELATED: Underwater Robots Think For Themselves
"There's a significant community in robotics that believe that the most flexible robots should be modular," said Roderich Gross, associate professor in robotics and computational intelligence at the University of Sheffield in England. "These robots should be made of many individual modules, much like humans are made of trillions of cells. But unlike humans, they can be rearranged like Legos so you can build a robot that suits a particular task and rearrange to do another task."
Gross' team recently presented a paper on an underwater self-assembling robot that is made up of several cubes. Each cube has four micro-pumps which allow it to move around independently in the water. When the cubes are joined together, they can draw in fluid from each other, as well as the surrounding water.
RELATED: Snake Robots to the Rescue
The robot moves as the fluid moves through the network of cubes. The more modules in the network, the more precisely the robot moves, and the better it copes with faults, according to Gross.
"If you have a tiny robot by itself, it is not very strong," Gross said. "But if you want to move something, and if you have a lot of robots to combine forces, like a Transformer robot, then you can manipulate robots with sufficient force."
Here's the video of Gross' modular six-cube robot:
The biggest engineering challenges are getting the modules small enough to fit into tight places, such as four-inch water pipes, for example, that need to be inspected or even the human vascular system.
"Being tiny is useful when you want to fit through some narrow passages," Gross said.
RELATED: Robot Reveals Sea Life Thriving Beneath Antarctic Ice
The other issue is communication. Rather than having the robots receive orders through a "master" robot or computer brain, the modules agree among themselves on what actions to perform . The next step is adding the ability to achieve more complex tasks.
"We are taking a radical approach where different modules work together without communication or arithmetic computation," he said. "They are simply taking action based on what they perceive, this requires just the ability to store information and then they immediately act. We need technology that doesn't have a heavy processing load, but can accomplish something."
Seth Goldstein , professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, says that modular robots could work in liquid, air or on land. Swarming modular robots are already being deployed by other research labs like bees, bats or birds, for example.
RELATED: Giant Robotic Jellyfish Readied for Sea Patrol
"If you build a special purpose robot, it can be less expensive, more efficient but it only does that task," he said. "As robotics moves into more areas of our lives, the ability to adapt to the task will become more important. You want robots that can change their shape and bring different amounts of resources."
Nikolaus Correll , assistant professor of computer science at the University of Colorado, said he likes the idea of routing water through the little cubes to keep them moving together and cover a larger area in the ocean.
"Pumps are readily available and solve the interface challenge (being waterproof) quite well, which might make them advantageous over existing propeller-based propulsion," Correll wrote in an e-mail. "The modular concept is advantageous as it would allow many of such modules to travel great distances in a safe and reliable manner, where they can then deploy into smaller subsets, allowing to cover larger areas with simultaneous sensing."
WATCH: What If The President Were A Robot?