My Job As A Pre-Launch Startup CEO Was To Buy Sandwiches

Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?

Today I'd like to show you the future of the way we make things. I believe that soon our buildings and machines will be self-assembling, replicating and repairing themselves. So I'm going to show you what I believe is the current state of manufacturing, and then compare that to some natural systems.

So in the current state of manufacturing, we have skyscrapers -- two and a half years, 500,000 to a million parts, fairly complex, new and exciting technologies in steel, concrete, glass. We have exciting machines that can take us into space -- five years, 2.5 million parts.

But on the other side, if you look at the natural systems, we have proteins that have two million types, can fold in 10,000 nanoseconds, or DNA with three billion base pairs we can replicate in roughly an hour. So there's all of this complexity in our natural systems, but they're extremely efficient, far more efficient than anything we can build, far more complex than anything we can build. They're far more efficient in terms of energy. They hardly ever make mistakes. And they can repair themselves for longevity.

So there's something super interesting about natural systems. And if we can translate that into our built environment, then there's some exciting potential for the way that we build things. And I think the key to that is self-assembly.

So if we want to utilize self-assembly in our physical environment, I think there's four key factors. The first is that we need to decode all of the complexity of what we want to build -- so our buildings and machines. And we need to decode that into simple sequences -- basically the DNA of how our buildings work. Then we need programmable parts that can take that sequence and use that to fold up, or reconfigure. We need some energy that's going to allow that to activate, allow our parts to be able to fold up from the program. And we need some type of error correction redundancy to guarantee that we have successfully built what we want.

So I'm going to show you a number of projects that my colleagues and I at MIT are working on to achieve this self-assembling future. The first two are the MacroBot and DeciBot. So these projects are large-scale reconfigurable robots -- 8 ft., 12 ft. long proteins. They're embedded with mechanical electrical devices, sensors. You decode what you want to fold up into, into a sequence of angles -- so negative 120, negative 120, 0, 0, 120, negative 120 -- something like that; so a sequence of angles, or turns, and you send that sequence through the string. Each unit takes its message -- so negative 120. It rotates to that, checks if it got there and then passes it to its neighbor.

So these are the brilliant scientists, engineers, designers that worked on this project. And I think it really brings to light: Is this really scalable? I mean, thousands of dollars, lots of man hours made to make this eight-foot robot. Can we really scale this up? Can we really embed robotics into every part? The next one questions that and looks at passive nature, or passively trying to have reconfiguration programmability. But it goes a step further, and it tries to have actual computation. It basically embeds the most fundamental building block of computing, the digital logic gate, directly into your parts.

So this is a NAND gate. You have one tetrahedron which is the gate that's going to do your computing, and you have two input tetrahedrons. One of them is the input from the user, as you're building your bricks. The other one is from the previous brick that was placed. And then it gives you an output in 3D space. So what this means is the user can start plugging in what they want the bricks to do. It computes on what it was doing before and what you said you wanted it to do. And now it starts moving in three-dimensional space -- so up or down. So on the left-hand side, [1,1] input equals 0 output, which goes down. On the right-hand side, [0,0] input is a 1 output, which goes up. And so what that really means is that our structures now contain the blueprints of what we want to build.

So they have all of the information embedded in them of what was constructed. So that means that we can have some form of self-replication. In this case I call it self-guided replication, because your structure contains the exact blueprints. If you have errors, you can replace a part. All the local information is embedded to tell you how to fix it. So you could have something that climbs along and reads it and can output at one to one. It's directly embedded; there's no external instructions.

So the last project I'll show is called Biased Chains, and it's probably the most exciting example that we have right now of passive self-assembly systems. So it takes the reconfigurability and programmability and makes it a completely passive system. So basically you have a chain of elements. Each element is completely identical, and they're biased. So each chain, or each element, wants to turn right or left. So as you assemble the chain, you're basically programming it. You're telling each unit if it should turn right or left. So when you shake the chain, it then folds up into any configuration that you've programmed in -- so in this case, a spiral, or in this case, two cubes next to each other. So you can basically program any three-dimensional shape -- or one-dimensional, two-dimensional -- up into this chain completely passively.

So what does this tell us about the future? I think that it's telling us that there's new possibilities for self-assembly, replication, repair in our physical structures, our buildings, machines. There's new programmability in these parts. And from that you have new possibilities for computing. We'll have spatial computing. Imagine if our buildings, our bridges, machines, all of our bricks could actually compute. That's amazing parallel and distributed computing power, new design possibilities. So it's exciting potential for this. So I think these projects I've showed you are just a tiny step towards this future, if we implement these new technologies for a new self-assembling world.

Thank you.

(Applause)

給台灣的12個新觀念

Understanding Quantum Physics

基礎科學課程 相對論

一、課程簡介、相對論的總覽

國立臺灣大學物理系 高涌泉 教授

2011.2.21　新物111

本堂課講授下列概念：

美哉！相對論
由狹義相對論談起
相對論的總覽（Overview of Relativity）
Michelson-Morley 實驗
光速恆定：C=constant !?
Einstein 的靈感

Video: Japanese University Uses Fish Scales To Develop Stronger Artificial Bones

Ceramics, metallic alloys, bone powder, wood or stem cells are just some of the substances doctors have used to replace or heal broken bones so far. Now a group of researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, led by Professor Junzo Tanaka, has come up with an alternative: fish scales.

According to the professor, using fish scales comes with three advantages (when compared to using collagen from pig skin, for example): it’s safer (viruses don’t migrate from fish to humans), the artificial bones are stronger, and the material converts to bone about two times faster.

German Robot Plays Pool

Thomas Nierhoff, a masters student at the Technische Universität München (TUM) programmed a humanoid robot to play pool. Of course we have seen PR2 play pool in the past but this robot does not need any special accessories to hold the pool cue. As shown in the video below, the robot can be very accurate and even the pool table can be augmented with the software developed for the robot in order to help humans play better.

We are eager to see this new contestant play against PR2, this could sprout a new kind of robotic competition.

Robots Shift Shape and Fits In Your Clothes

As shown in the video, the robot can adapt to take pretty much any shape a human can have by shifting the soft panels that make up its body.

Obama is the Friend of Robots, Announces Robotic Revolution

United States president Barak Obama announced a major manufacturing initiative from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The idea is to create an ”Advanced Manufacturing Partnership” (AMP) that brings together major U.S. manufacturers and top U.S. universities in order to invigorate the local manufacturing activities.


The video above features the full Obama speech at CMU. The video is 22 minutes long, but is filled with interesting information about the current robotic market and nice bits of humor.

Robots Cannot Eat Hamburgers… Yet

The premise of the commercial is that if a robot can not eat or use a product, then it should not make it. Although we know this is just for fun, it is important to point out that robots are commonly involved in producing many foods and consumption goods, so using that reasoning, we would not be able to use or eat much of what is available.

One fun aspect of the commercial is that they posted the making-of the video which is rather interesting to watch.

Robots for Humanity, PR2 Helps Humans in Need

PR2 from Willow Garage is now able to help people with disabilities to perform everyday tasks such as manipulating objects shaving and more. The video below illustrates the scope and the results of the Robots for Humanity project that Willow Garage, the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech, and Henry and Jane Evans are pioneering.

Learn Artificial Intelligence at Stanford for Free

If you ever wanted to learn about AI in a prestigious university, this is your chance. Stanford University is offering its fall Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class I for free for everybody willing to register. All the class contents and lectures will be made available on-line and web students will need to submit assignments and pass tests just are regular students do. They will be also graded at the end of the semester.


Artificial Intelligence is the science of making computer software that reasons about the world around it. Humanoid robots, Google Goggles, self-driving cars, even software that suggests music you might like to hear are all examples of AI. In this class, you will learn how to create this software from two of the leaders in the field. Class begins October 10. Details on the course, including a syllabus are available here.

Swarmanoid, Robot Collaboration At Its Best

Swarm robotics -using several simple collaborating robots to accomplish very complex tasks, instead of using a single very complex robot- is becoming increasingly popular. The Swarmanoid project is a perfect example of what can be achieved by using a swarm of small robots.

As illustrated in the video above, each type of robot concentrates on a single task (e.g. navigating, grasping, or seeing) and combined they can produce emerging behaviours that are more than just the sum of their individual capabilities.

Child Gets Robotic Hand From Mercedes and Touch Bionic

Child Gets Robotic Hand From Mercedes and Touch Bionic
August 18th, 2011

What happens when a 14 year old Formula 1 enthusiast emails Mercedes-Benz asking for a contribution for a new 58 000 $ bionic arm? If Matthew James (from Woking , UK) serves as a reference: he gets it.

Matthew was born missing part of his left arm and hand and is now the owner of a very advanced “iLimb” bionic hand. When he mockingly offered Mercedes-Benz to post sponsor logos on the limb in exchange for financial help, the car manufacturer was touched by the request and actually helped him raise the funds. Then they partnered with Touch Bionic to make a custom fitted robotic hand.

iRobot 110, A Robot You Can Throw

iRobot has been working for some time now on an inexpensive (relatively speaking) military robot that would allow soldiers to explore hard-to-reach areas without risking their lives. You can see the results of their efforts in the video below, the iRobot 110 throwable robot.

As shown in the video above, not only does the robot need to be rugged, it also needs to be light so it can be carried and thrown without requiring too much extra effort from the soldiers.

Documentary about Cyborgs by a Cyborg

The recently released Deus Ex: Human Revolution video game is raising some very interesting questions regarding Cyborgs, bionic implants (or augmentations as they are referred to in the game). The documentary below explores the similarities between the fictitious augmentations and the current state of the art in bionic technology. Not only does this 12 minutes documentary feature some of the most advanced cyborgs out there, it is presented by a cyborg.

CamiApp Lets You Digitize Notes On Paper Notepads With Your Smartphone (Video)

Japanese stationery maker Kokuyo has come up with an easy way to digitize and permanently store what you jot down on paper notepads: all you need is a an iPhone (or soon Android handset), a special app called CamiApp (available for free and in English on the App Store), and notepads made by Kokuyo.

The company says that taking pictures of the notes is enough: CamiApp adjusts the quality through using AR markers or a black frame before it lets you tag, edit, email or store your notes on Evernote or Dropbox (as JPEGs).

Kokuyo is currently preparing an Android version and thinks about exporting their CamiApp-optimized notepads.

This video (in English, shot by Diginfonews in Tokyo) provides more insight:

Hot, Flat, And Widescreen: The Rise Of The Minitabs

Mini Keepon

Carlitos’ Projects: Speech-Controlled Arduino Robot

You may be thinking that making such a robot must be a very complex task. After all, humans take many years before they can understand speech properly. Well, it is not as difficult as you may think and it is definitely lots of fun. The video below illustrates how to make your own speech-controlled Arduino rover.