Metamaterials Image
Army and MIT’s way of linking metamaterials makes building a supermileage vehicles, like this one from collaborators Toyota Automotive Society, possible. (Kohshi Katoh, Toyota Automotive Society)

Scientists from the U.S. Army and MIT created a new way to link materials with unique mechanical properties, opening up the possibility of future military robots made of robots. The method unifies the construction of varying types of mechanical metamaterials using a discrete lattice, enabling the design of modular materials with properties tailored to their application.

These building blocks and their resulting materials could lead to dynamic structures that can reconfigure on their own; for example, a swarm of robots could form a bridge to allow troops to cross a river. Robots rearranging to form a bridge made of robots, similar to ants, is one embodiment of the concept of structural robotics, which blur the line between active and passive elements and feature reconfigurability.