These “gears” are covered with electromagnets or half-capacitors. When placed next to each other, they will cause each other to spin, depending on the state of the magnet, and propel each other.
A set of actuator stacks in action. The two cylinders do not contain any moving parts. Through the magic of Moore’s Law, researchers believe they can coat a sphere less than a millimeter in diameter with several microscopic actuators. These beads could then form an intelligent fabric.
A closeup of one of the actuators.
This, essentially, is a simulation of a robot spelling bee. The purple shaded area is actually a field of 40,000 simulated robots. They are moving around the holes, represented by black dots. The collective movement transforms five squares of robots and gets them to spell Intel.
Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Previously, Bill was an IT manager in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention.
