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Wii come in piece!

Imagine a beowolf cluster of WiiMotes coming attacking you and you get the idea.

The bot's creators hope it will make a great working companion for places like, say, the Moon. Or Mars.

Oh, sure, send it to Mars and leave us completely defenseless against King Zarkon.

I for one welcome our shapechanging superbot overlords

ha an anonymous coward got it, eat that all you first posters :P

1. I for one welcome our new modular overlords. 2. ... 3. Profit!

That doesn't sound very Voltron-like to me. I suspect that Getter Robo would be a more apt comparison.

Hopefully this robot will be smart enough to form it's blazing sword at the BEGINNING of a fight instead of waiting until it is getting it's ass kicked.

Found some more footage: modular robot. [youtube.com]

The Replicators.

When the robots gain the ability to create more of themselves using whatever metal they can get their pliers on, then we'll be in trouble.

...when it can "Form Blazing Sword!"

The videos are all very cute but there is no actual footage demonstrating the "polymorphic" robot actually changing shape from say a wheel to say a humanoid then say again to a Caterpillar. If a bunch of these cubes self assembled into a shape to perform a task I would be seriously impressed. Also did any one notice that the feet cubes had plates on the end for the "humanoid" robot so not all the cubes were identical. We need self assembling Lego not cubes with feet !!

I seem to have missed part of my geek education. Could somebody please explain to me why the whole shape-changing robot thing is useful? Like, in the middle of a battle the robot in question, what, ducks around a corner and folds into the shape of an eight ton cassette tape, and the bad guys come rushing around the corner and... what's this? He's gone! There's nothing here but this cassette tape the size of a semi truck! And it's snickering at us! Oh, well.

But I agree, we should definitely let our mighty, nigh-invulnerable robot slaves establish an unassailable beachhead on Mars. Also, we should give them human-like motivations, emotions, and needs, so that they may better serve us. And, some of them should look just like humans, so that they can use our equipment and so people will be more comfortable around them.

Now instead of wrapping someone's toilet in plastic wrap, you can wrap someone's robot in plastic wrap and watch the look on his face when the robot won't reassemble itself to his orders. Or wrap one segment only, and watch as it tries to assemble itself. Hilarity ensues.

Mal-2

I'm afraid the Japanese lump looks much better it even demonstrates the units changing shape which is what its about I think :)

http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/dsysd/mtran/English/expe rimentE.htm [aist.go.jp]

Where are the lions? And the myriad of chromatically matching drivers?

And Pidge? How could they forget Pidge???

I am not putting down the developers of this "superbot", I applaud them...I cannot get even close to making anything similar. But I thought I'd see it walk on the ground like a human being, find a hanging rope, sense what it is and go ahead and climb it...or at least see it [automatically] transform itself into different forms in order to traverse different terrain.

Question though: What language might have been used to program this thing?

The robots have a high pitched and annoying sound! Consider my hearing checked!!

Show us your robot crank. YOU KILLED MY MOMMIE! http://threebrain.com/dailies2.php?daily=479 [threebrain.com]

I hope we only end up working together with the good planets of the solar system.

This isn't Voltron-like at all; Voltron was originally one robot that was split into five pieces by the evil witch's spell!

Why do I *know* that?!

It seems to modulate sometimes when the robot flexes... is all that noise from the servos? What causes it, and why is it so loud?

This concept was already thought of and used in the 1983 (non-HIT) TV-series 'Terrahawks', as the 'Cubes from Zelda'. The Terrahawks was the not so successful successor to the well-known Thunderbirds series by the same creator. Thunderbirds @ imdb: http://imdb.com/title/tt0085099/ [imdb.com] Cubes: http://www.fab1.net/t-hawks/a-craft.htm [fab1.net] (on the image you can see them portray as a gun and a forcefield generator WHOA how'bout them apples?!)

Can these robots assemble themselves into a webserver mirror so that we can read the article, please?

Links to pictures and videos from this page: http://www.isi.edu/robots/superbot.htm [isi.edu]

For any other readers...there are 11-14 "university of southern california"s. Please specify next time if you can.

Shades of Robert Forward's Christmas Bush.

This robot seemed like it needed a special application to do each job. For the robe it had something to thread it to. To walk it had plates on the bottom of its feet. I was hopeing to see all the block start on the group and come toghether to make something then show off what that something can do. All in all ill just keep holding my breath for a robot that can do something on its own.

More like Seven Force from Gunstar Heroes.

... big bolt in the robot's bellybutton area for?

Unscrews it and robot's ass falls off.

Does anybody else see the resemblance between this robot and a Darwinian [doodeoo.com]?