Designing robots that assemble and adapt

What happens when you send a rolling robot out for a mission, and it turns out they need legs instead? That happens more often than you might think, and to combat that Michigan Engineers are working on creating “self-assembling” robots that can build themselves into any form required.

U-M Assistant Professor Shai Revzen and his team at the Biologically Inspired Robotics and Dynamical Systems (BIRDS) Lab are working on a variety of innovative solutions to create mechanical and robotic tools for challenging situations. In addition to self-assembling technologies, the team hopes to identify, model and reproduce the strategies animals use to combine mechanical and neural control for interacting with physical objects.