Morphing cars and planes closer as Pentagon develops shape-shifting robot

Pentagon research scientists have taken a first step towards "Transformers"-style shape-shifting cars and aircraft, with a robot that can fold itself like origami into different forms.

By Tom Chivers
Published: 12:16PM BST 30 Jun 2010
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At the moment the tiny robot - a sheet just half a millimetre thick, scarcely thicker than a piece of paper - only folds itself into a boat, like a child's toy, or a "paper glider" plane shape. But it is anticipated that in future it will be used to create full-sized cars and aircraft that morph as they move, or robots that can "flow" like mercury into small openings, or multipurpose military uniforms that can adapt to different environments.

Researchers at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) launched the project in 2007 in conjunction with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a small sheet of stiff tiles and "joints" of elastomer, “studded with thin foil actuators and flexible electronics. The demonstration material contains 25 total actuators, divided into five groupings. A shape is produced by triggering the proper actuator groups in sequence,” according to a statement by Robert Wood, the head of the Harvard research team.


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The robot has four distinct stages in its shape-shifting. First, an algorithm creates a model of the 3-D shape it is to become, and it reverse-engineers the folding paths required to get there. A second algorithm produces a plan telling each individual tile how and when to fold to match those paths.

Dr Wood continues, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “The third algorithm receives each of the individual plans [and] assembles them onto one sheet…. Finally, the fourth algorithm chooses the optimum arrangement [to] minimize either the number of actuators or number of actuator groups.”

It is hoped that, in the not too distant future, a soldier (or engineer) can carry a can, like a paint can, in his or her vehicle, filled with shape-shifting particles of varying size. By telling the particles via computer what shape they need - for example, a specific size spanner - he or she can make the particles form that shape.

Further down the line it could create clothing that can keep its wearer cool by day and warm by night, or aircraft's wings that can change aerodynamic shape in flight.