While small in size, these shape-shifting, wireless prototypes called ElectroVoxels have some pretty big applications for space exploration, the research team says. The ElectroVoxels were inspired in part by the modular robots in the film Big Hero 6, says Martin Nisser, Ph.D. student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of the study. Instead of one robot with a single use, the smaller modules can come together to build multiple types of structures of various functions.

Since the robots are so small, the project has a greater number of wide-ranging applications for space than it does on Earth.

(Via PopSci.)

For those interested in technical details, more can be found here:

In this paper, we contribute the first demonstration of reconfigurable robots leveraging the electromagnetically actuated pivoting framework that are fully untethered, supported by reconfiguration planning software and electromagnet force predictions verified experimentally.

A key goal is to validate these robots' use for microgravity environments to enable near-term space industry applications where propellant-free actuation and reconfigurability address many challenges associated with today’s limitations on launch mass and volume, as well as facilitating stowage during launch. Reconfigurable modules can enable the augmentation and replacement of structures over multiple launches, form temporary structures to aid in spacecraft inspection and astronaut assistance, function as self-sorting storage containers, and allow spacecraft to actively change their inertia properties.

Microgravity alleviates demands placed on actuation forces, facilitating untethering of the modules by moving electronics onboard, and we chose electromagnet parameters such as winding number, core radius and material to limit current. We also parameterized Ampere’s Force law in terms of these parameters to expand the design space of electromagnetic actuators for future modules' force and mass requirements.

We simulate a microgravity environment using an air table, and deploy our modules on a parabolic flight to demonstrate untethered three-dimensional reconfigurability in space.

(Via ElectroVoxel: Electromagnetically Actuated Pivoting for Scalable Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robots. )

Golden Age legend Jack Williamson wrote a great story titled The Infinite Enemy, published in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938, in which an alternate universe is found to contain a being comprised of metallic cubes.

(The Cube Being from The Infinite Enemy)

Fans of early scientifiction may recall the living metal cubes from The Metal Monster, a 1920 story by Abraham Merritt.

Faster the cubes moved; faster the circle revolved; the pyramids raised themselves, stood bolt upright on their square bases; the six rolling spheres touched them, joined the spinning, and with sleight-of-hand suddenness the ring drew together; its units coalesced, cubes and pyramids and globes threading with a curious suggestion of ferment.

With the same startling abruptness there stood erect, where but a moment before they had seethed, a little figure, grotesque; a weirdly humorous, a vaguely terrifying foot-high shape, squared and angled and pointed and ANIMATE—as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantastic shape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life.