CSAIL Event Calendar

TALK: Higher-order Structure by Distributed Self-assembly Robots

ABSTRACT:
One of the major features of biological systems is that the activities at the molecular level are realized in a decentralized fashion, namely, without any central control. The phenomenon is termed self-assembly, which is defined as “autonomous organization into patterns or structures without human intervention” (Whitesides & Grzybowski, 2002), and is expected to play a key role in the realization of life-like machines (e.g. self-repairable machines). In this talk, I will investigate the potential for developing self-assembly systems that are applicable on different scales and will present a series of robotic components, which are capable of self-assembling on a liquid surface. Each robotic model has an incremental level of complexity, which satisfies the prerequisites of performing self-assembly at molecular levels. I will first discuss the design scheme for realizing efficient self-assembly on the centimeter scale and then introduce the developed self-assembly components while focusing on the interactive perspective, the effect of dynamics, and logical reactions that are mechanically attained. As a proof of the scalability of the model, a scheme of two-dimensional micro module reconfiguration that is based on inter module interactions will be presented.

SHORT BIO:
Shuhei Miyashita is a postdoctoral research associate at NanoRobotics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, where he pursues his research interests on self-assembly robots at the micron scale. After he obtained his Masters Degree in Computational Intelligence and Systems Science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology under the supervision of Professor Satoshi Murata, he continued his work at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich, where he obtained his Ph.D. working with Professor Rolf Pfeifer. Throughout these periods, he has been working on the development of self-assembly robots across various scales, and he has been dedicated to realizing devices that can attain functionalities comparable to living systems, such as development, self-repair, or catalysis. His ultimate aim is to establish a link between artificial systems and living systems by realizing biological wisdoms in an engineering context and by adopting robotics theories in chemistry. Key concepts that define the methodologies he uses in his research are “self assembly robotics”, “dissipative autonomous-distributed systems”, “systems with multi-degrees of freedom”, and “micro mobile robotics”.

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