Robotic Cubes with Reprogrammable Materials Selectively Self-Assemble

Researchers created a method for magnetically programming materials to make cubes that are very picky about who they connect with, enabling more scalable self-assembly.

“This work is a step forward in terms of the resolution, cost, and efficacy with which we can self-assemble particular structures,” says Martin Nisser , a PhD student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), an affiliate of CSAIL, and the lead author on a new paper about the system.