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Imagine the lego bricks which can be assembled and connected in a myriad combinations. Each of a modular-robot is individually a complete robotic system and has a power supply, micro- controllers, sensors, communication, three degrees of freedom, and six connecting faces (front, back, left, right, up and down) to dynamically connect to other modules.
When connected, all of the bot modules coordinate their movements depending on how many modules there are, how they’re connected, and where they need to go. If they run into a snag, they can always detach and reconfigure themselves into (effectively) an entirely different robot. SuperBots are obviously still a work in progress (you may have seen a prototype and some computer models on the Discovery Channel (or Science Channel) show Beyond Tomorrow, but the current design stage (reached only last week) is a much better illustration of their long term potential.
(ohgizmo)
References: eurekalert.org, ohgizmo
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